Jeremiah 31:29-30 — Everyone shall die for his own iniquity

“In those days they shall no longer say: ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ But everyone shall die for his own iniquity. Each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge.”

Jeremiah 31:29-30

Context: a proverb in Jeremiah’s Book of Consolation

Chapters 30 and 31 of the book of Jeremiah bear, in the history of interpretation, the name “Book of Consolation.” After chapters full of announced judgement the tone turns: the exiles will come home, the city will be rebuilt, Rachel ceases to weep. Our verse belongs in this connection. It is not a legal maxim casually scattered in, but a component of the announcement of salvation itself — and immediately after it, in verse 31, follows the most famous promise of the book: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.”

The proverb of the sour grapes was evidently on everyone’s lips. Ezekiel, a contemporary of Jeremiah among the deportees, cites it almost word for word and combats it with the same sharpness: “What do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’?” (Ezekiel 18:2). Two prophets, separated by half a kingdom, attack the same saying. That is no accident, but an indication of how powerful this interpretation of the catastrophe was: people explained the exile to themselves as the payment of a debt that others had incurred.

Historically this is understandable. The books of Kings had grounded the end of Judah in the sins of Manasseh, and the Second Commandment speaks of God “visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation” (Exodus 20:5). Anyone standing in the ruins of Jerusalem could draw from this a convenient and at the same time paralysing conclusion: we are paying for others; our own conduct changes nothing. It is exactly this conclusion that both prophets forbid. The promise of a new covenant would be meaningless if the individual lay under a balance of debt he never contracted and can never discharge.

Fausto Sozzini reads Jeremiah 31 throughout as the announcement of a prevenient goodness of God — of a covenant God offers on his own initiative, not of a contract that would first require an appeasement. In his principal work he quotes the text of the new covenant at full length and draws from it a conclusion that also carries our verse:

“See how generous and how sublime is the covenant which Jesus Christ concluded with us in our name. Can it even enter anyone’s mind that God was still angry with us when he commanded him to conclude that covenant?”

Fausto Sozzini, On Jesus Christ the Saviour (De Iesu Christo Servatore), ‘Mediator without satisfaction’

The connection is close: where a God first forgives and then makes a covenant, there is no room for an inherited state of guilt that would first have to be settled. Verses 29 and 30 clear, as it were, the ground on which the new covenant is erected. First the proverb falls, then the covenant comes.

The Socinian central thesis

The Socinian reading takes the verse for what it grammatically is: an abolition. Something that used to be said will no longer be said. What is not denied is the experience that children suffer under the deeds of their parents — no one with eyes denies that. What is denied is that a guilt of the children before God follows from it. Between consequence and guilt runs the whole line, and Jeremiah draws it with a single sentence: “everyone shall die for his own iniquity” — for his own, not for another’s.

For Sozzini this is no marginal proof text but a chief proof. In his dialogue on justification he puts the question expressly: on account of which sins had we incurred the debt of death — on account of our own or of our parents’? And the answer points first of all to our passage. The order is telling: Jeremiah 31:29 stands before Ezekiel 18 and before John 9:34. The prophet who announces the new covenant is at the same time the first witness against inherited guilt.

This also says what the Socinian thesis does not assert. It does not assert that man is undamaged; it does not assert that there is no inclination to evil; and above all it does not assert that death is not an inheritance from Adam. Sozzini expressly maintains that the penalty imposed upon Adam — mortality — passes to all his descendants, without regard to their own conduct. What he denies is the transformation of this penalty into a guilt: that we are born already sinners, worthy of damnation, before we have acted.

The distinction is precise and can be read off the verse itself. Jeremiah does not say: no one will die any more. He says: each will die for his own iniquity. Death remains; its imputation changes. And the second half-verse completes the reversal: “each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge.” Whoever eats the sour grapes feels them — not his child. The image is not discarded but set right.

Exegesis: key terms and word field

boser — “sour grapes,” the unripe fruit

The word denotes unripe grapes whose acidity draws the teeth together. English versions render it “sour grapes”; Luther chose the German word “Herlinge,” rare today. What is meant is the hard, tart fruit one gets by harvesting too early. The image is agricultural and immediately intelligible to every hearer: whoever harvests unripe spoils his own mouth.

What matters is what the image achieves and what it does not. It describes a bodily, immediate reaction — not a judgement, not an imputation. The proverb now claimed that this immediate reaction occurs in someone other than the one who eats. Precisely in this lies its absurdity, and the prophets bring it out by taking the image at its word: teeth are set on edge in the man who had the grapes in his mouth.

tiqhena — from qahah: “to be set on edge”

The verb is rare and denotes the peculiar sensation acid leaves on the teeth: a bluntness, a numbing. The ancient versions struggle with it; the Septuagint chooses a word for “to blunt, to make insensible.” In both attested passages — here and Ezekiel 18:2 — the verb stands in the feminine plural, because teeth are feminine in Hebrew.

For interpretation it is significant that the word has no juridical colouring. It describes a sensation, not a condemnation. So when the proverb locates the sensation of the one man in the teeth of another, it does not merely transfer a legal consequence but something impossible — and for just that reason it serves as an emblem of the notion that one man could bear the guilt of another.

‘awon — deed, guilt and consequence of guilt in one word

The key term of the second half-verse is ‘awon. In Hebrew it denotes a triad for which English needs three words: the crooked deed, the guilt arising from it, and the punishment that follows upon it. That a single item of vocabulary carries all three meanings is not vagueness but a world-view: deed and outcome belong together like seed and fruit.

Exactly this word stands also in Ezekiel 18:20 (“The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father”) and in Deuteronomy 24:16. Whoever lays the three passages side by side sees a continuous line of law running through the Hebrew Bible — from the law, through the prophet of the exile, to the prophet of the return. And in all three the reference is the same: his own iniquity, with an express possessive suffix.

‘ish ba‘awono yamut — “each will die for his own guilt”

The decisive sentence consists in Hebrew of three words. First stands ‘ish, “a man, each one” — the word for the individual, which in legal texts designates the single case. Then the preposition be with ‘awon and the third-person suffix: “in/for his guilt.” Last the verb: “shall die.”

The order is rhetorically charged: the word for the individual comes first, before guilt and death are spoken of. The language therefore sets down the person first and only then attaches the consequence to him. That the same construction — ‘ish first, guilt and dying after — appears in 2 Chronicles 25:4 as the ground of a concrete judicial decision shows that it was understood in Israel as a valid rule of law and not as a pious ideal.

berit chadashah — the new covenant as frame

Two verses later falls the expression that gave the whole section its name: berit chadashah, “a new covenant.” The proximity is relevant for interpretation. The new covenant is defined by the law “within them, written on their hearts” and by the assurance: “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:33-34). A covenant resting on inward assent presupposes a partner who is able to assent.

With that, the connection between our verse and the promise is not merely spatial but substantial. First the alien guilt is cleared away, then the covenant is concluded which forgives one’s own. The two belong together: one cannot write a law on the heart of a man whose heart stands legally condemned from birth.

Comparison of the interpretations

Sozzini on the “Jewish fable” of original sin

In the dialogue between John and Christopher, which forms the second part of Sozzini’s treatise on justification, the question is raised why men are worthy of death and on account of which sins they had incurred this debt — their own or their parents’. The answer begins with our passage. Sozzini names three proofs in a row, and Jeremiah 31:29 stands first:

“For that invention of original sin, or of the guilt of the parents, is a Jewish fable, as you may see in Jer. 31:29; Ezek. 18:2-3; John 9:34.”

Fausto Sozzini, On Justification (De iustificatione), ‘Grace of God, sin, and rejection of original sin’

The expression is sharp, and means to be sharp; in substance it is precise. Sozzini does not deny that such a manner of speaking existed in Israel — he refers precisely to the passages where it is attested. What he denies is that it is the teaching of Scripture. What Jeremiah and Ezekiel adduce as a proverb in the mouth of the people, and reject, later returned into the church as dogma. The reproach is therefore directed not against Judaism, but against a popular opinion that the prophets themselves discarded.

Immediately afterwards Sozzini develops the legal argument, and he does so in a formulation that takes up Jeremiah’s second half-verse almost word for word:

“But it would be unjust that we should have to pay for what we have not sinned, since God himself has affirmed that the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, but that everyone shall die for his own guilt; thus we have died through our own sins, in which we once lived, Eph. 2.”

Fausto Sozzini, On Justification (De iustificatione), ‘Grace of God, sin, and rejection of original sin’

Remarkable here is the mode of proof. Sozzini does not appeal to a general sense of justice which he then imposes upon Scripture, but to an express declaration of God: “since God himself has affirmed.” Reason does not supply the principle; it recognises it again in what God has said. That is the order typical of Socinianism: Scripture lays down the proposition, reason draws the consequences.

In the same connection Sozzini examines how Paul proceeds when he convicts mankind of sin. The result serves him as a counter-test: if an inherited guilt were the real charge, it would have to appear in the great indictment of the Letter to the Romans. It does not appear.

“Therefore Paul too, when by reason, experience and the testimonies of Scripture he convicted both Jews and Gentiles of sin, did not accuse the sin of the parents or of Adam or a corrupted nature, but imputed the guilt to those very men who sinned.”

Fausto Sozzini, On Justification (De iustificatione), ‘Grace of God, sin, and rejection of original sin’

With that the arc from Jeremiah to Paul is closed. The prophet formulates the principle, the apostle proceeds according to it: he accuses the Gentiles because they could know God and did not use that knowledge rightly, and the Jews because they had the oracles of God. In both cases the ground of the accusation is something the accused have done or omitted — not something that befell them before they were born.

The Racovian Catechism on original sin and free will

The Racovian Catechism treats original sin not in the doctrine of man but in the section “On free will” — an arrangement that already contains the whole position. The question there runs simply: is this free will not corrupted by original sin? The answer begins by noting that the advocates of the doctrine are not themselves agreed about its content, and then continues:

“By the fall of Adam the nature of man has by no means been so corrupted that in what God requires of him — whether under threat of punishment or under promise of reward — he should have been deprived of the freedom and the capacity of decision to obey God or not to obey.”

Racovian Catechism, chapter ‘Original sin and free will’

The argument has a quiet severity. Even after the fall God requires under threat of punishment that man will and do what is right. A demand addressed to a being from whom the capacity to answer had been taken would not be a commandment but mockery. The Catechism adds a second, historical and textual ground: among the punishments God imposes upon Adam in the third chapter of Genesis, the loss of free will is nowhere mentioned. One would therefore have to invent it in addition.

In doing so the Catechism does not deny experience. It expressly grants that human nature “is afflicted, through the constancy of sinning, with a certain blemish and with an all too great inclination to sin” — it denies only that this inclination is in itself already sin. The difference between an inclination and a guilt is the same that Jeremiah draws between the consequence and the imputation.

The classic proof text of the other side is examined as well. On Romans 5:12 the Catechism remarks that the Greek eph’ hō does not mean “in whom” but “inasmuch as” or “because”; death passed to all because all sinned. And then follows the decisive demonstration from the verse immediately following:

“But he speaks throughout of actual sin, as the sequel shows, when he says: ‘For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.’”

Racovian Catechism, chapter ‘Original sin and free will’

The demonstration is purely philological and therefore strong: if in the very next breath Paul speaks of a sin that is not counted without law, then he cannot be speaking of a sin that clings to man without any doing of his own. The sentence comes not from an interpreter who needs it, but from the apostle himself, whose chapter counts as the chief support of the opposing doctrine.

What the Socinians do not deny: inherited death

Honesty of presentation requires that the limit of the thesis be marked. The Socinians are no deniers of every consequence of the fall. On the contrary: Sozzini maintains with striking definiteness that the penalty imposed upon Adam touches all his descendants, and that without regard to their own conduct.

“It is quite certain that the penalties appointed for the sin of the first forefather concern his entire posterity, without regard to the sin of that posterity; for this reason alone, that they are the descendants of Adam himself and derive from him.”

Fausto Sozzini, On Justification (De iustificatione), ‘Learned notes on justification, faith and the Holy Spirit’

At first the sentence sounds like a contradiction of all that precedes, but it is the necessary complement. Sozzini distinguishes two things which later dogmatics drew together: the penalty and the guilt. Death is Adam’s penalty and touches all who descend from him — as the children of an exile are born in a foreign land without themselves having been banished. But no one becomes worthy of damnation by birth.

The Racovian Catechism draws the same line still more sharply, naming both causes of death and expressly supplementing the second with the adults’ own share:

“From this it further came about that he drew his whole posterity with him into the same liability to death; yet in the case of adults each one’s own transgression was added, the force of which was then increased by the manifest law of God which men had transgressed.”

Racovian Catechism, ‘Adam’s transgression’

That is exactly Jeremiah’s order, translated into dogmatic terms. Man is mortal as a descendant; he becomes guilty as an agent. Whoever separates the two can say: all die — and at the same time: each dies for his own iniquity. Whoever mixes them must either deny the mortality of children or ascribe to them a guilt they have not taken upon themselves.

Logical arguments

The following considerations are ordered from the wording to the consequences for the doctrine as a whole.

1. The verse formulates a principle, not a ruling for a single case. “Everyone shall die for his own iniquity” contains neither a temporal nor a personal restriction. Sentences of this form are principles in the legal language of the Bible — comparable to Deuteronomy 24:16, where the same rule is given to the judges as an instruction. A principle that holds for the father holds also for the distant forefather.
2. The abolition concerns the speaking, not first of all the law. “They shall no longer say” — the prophet announces that a manner of speaking will disappear because it proves to be false. Had it previously held good by right, he would have to announce that God is changing his procedure. He does the opposite: he corrects what the people said wrongly, as Ezekiel 18:2-4 shows in still sharper form.
3. The second half-verse is the positive reversal, not merely a negation. “Each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge” — the image is not discarded but rightly assigned. Thereby an order is asserted in which deed and consequence remain with the same subject. That is more than the renunciation of clan liability; it is a statement about the justice of God.
4. The unity of deed, guilt and punishment in the word ‘awon tells against their separation. If one and the same word denotes the crooked deed, the guilt and its consequence, the notion that someone could bear the guilt without the deed is hard to accommodate. The language itself holds together what the doctrine of original sin must take apart.
5. The position before the new covenant is no accident. The covenant that is written “on the heart” and promises forgiveness presupposes a man who can assent and turn about. Two verses lie between the abolition of the fathers’ sin and the promise. Whoever weakens the first statement withdraws the presupposition of the second.
6. The burden of proof lies with the imputation, not with its denial. That men suffer under the consequences of others’ deeds is experience. That a state of guilt before God arises for them from it is an additional assertion and requires a passage of Scripture that states it. Jeremiah 31:30, Ezekiel 18:20 and Deuteronomy 24:16 expressly say the opposite.
7. Paul proceeds in his indictment according to this principle. In Romans 1-3 no one is charged with the sin of Adam or of his parents; the Gentiles are accused because they did not rightly use their knowledge of God, and the Jews because they possessed the oracles of God. And in Romans 2:6 it says: God will render “to each one according to his works.”
8. The separation of penalty and guilt resolves the apparent contradiction with Romans 5. That death reigns over all from Adam is expressly taught by the Socinians. What is denied is only that worthiness of damnation is inherited along with death. It is this distinction that allows 1 Corinthians 15:22 and Jeremiah 31:30 to stand together without bending either passage.

Biblical cross-references

Deuteronomy 24:16 — the law itself

“Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.” This sentence stands not in a prophet but in the law, and it is addressed to the judges of Israel. Jeremiah’s principle is therefore no innovation of the exile but a recollection of Torah law. See Deuteronomy 24:16.

Ezekiel 18:2-4 — the same proverb, the same answer

Ezekiel quotes the saying verbatim and rejects it with an oath: “As I live, declares the Lord GOD, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel.” That two independent prophets reject the same saying on the same ground makes the position unmistakable. See Ezekiel 18:4.

Ezekiel 18:20 — the express formula

“The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son.” Here the principle is stated in both directions — the righteous man too cannot pass on his righteousness. With that the notion is excluded at the same time that merit and guilt are transferable quantities. See Ezekiel 18:20.

2 Chronicles 25:3-4 — the practical application

King Amaziah has the murderers of his father executed, but expressly spares their children — and the chronicler names the legal ground: the law of Moses, which forbids letting children die for their fathers. The principle was therefore not mere theory but was applied as valid law. See 2 Chronicles 25:4.

John 9:2-3 — Jesus rejects the question of inherited guilt

The disciples ask whether this man or his parents sinned, that he was born blind — the question presupposes the proverb of the sour grapes. Jesus denies both alternatives. In the same series Sozzini also adduces John 9:34, where the Pharisees cast out the healed man with “You were born in utter sin”: the voice of the opposing side, not that of the Gospel. See John 9:2-3.

Romans 5:12 — the eph’ hō

“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man … because all sinned.” The Vulgate read in quo, “in whom,” and thereby supported imputation in Adam; the Greek text says “inasmuch as” or “because.” The Racovian Catechism shows that the following statement about non-imputation without law compels the second reading. See Romans 5:12.

Romans 2:6 — the apostolic principle

“He will render to each one according to his works.” Paul formulates the measure of the judgement in the same categories as Jeremiah: one’s own deed, one’s own consequence. Whoever posits inherited guilt as a ground of accusation in the judgement must restrict this sentence, although Paul pronounces it without restriction. See Romans 2:6.

Genesis 8:21 — the inclination, not the guilt

“The intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” The passage counts as a proof of innate corruption; it stands, however, within a reason why God will no longer punish. From a sentence that grounds God’s forbearance one can hardly derive the ground of a damnation. See Genesis 8:21.

Objections and Socinian answers

1. “The Second Commandment expressly says that God visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children”

The objection carries weight, but it overlooks the continuation of the commandment. God visits it “on the children of those who hate me” — the imputation is expressly bound to an attitude of the children, not to their mere descent. The fathers-formula moreover describes an effect within history: where idolatry is handed on across generations, judgement strikes the chain that continues it. That this means no automatic liability is shown by the Bible’s handling of its own formula: Deuteronomy 24:16 forbids the judges precisely what a literally understood clan liability would require, and 2 Chronicles 25:4 names this prohibition as valid law. Jeremiah therefore does not abolish the commandment but the popular abbreviation that turned it into a doom. And even if one read the fathers-formula more harshly, the distance to the doctrine of original sin would remain great: it speaks of temporal outcomes to the fourth generation, not of the eternal damnation of all men of all times.

2. “The verse concerns a future time — it says nothing about the present order”

The observation about the temporal reference is correct, the inference is not. What is announced is not that God will in future judge otherwise, but that men will in future speak otherwise: “they shall no longer say.” That is the language of correction, not of a change of law. Ezekiel makes this unmistakable by forbidding the same proverb with a divine oath and adding the ground in the present tense: “Behold, all souls are mine.” Besides, the principle itself is far older than both prophets — Deuteronomy 24:16 stands in the law and is cited in 2 Chronicles 25:4 as long since valid. A rule that already stands in the Torah, is impressed anew in the exile and is confirmed for the future, is no innovation of the new covenant but its presupposition. And finally: if the imputation of another’s guilt had ever been just, one would have to assume that God changed his standard of justice.

3. “Jeremiah speaks of the immediate fathers, not of Adam”

The distinction is acute, but it aggravates the problem instead of solving it. If even the guilt of one’s own father cannot be transferred — a father one knows and whose house one shares — how should the guilt of a forefather millennia back be transferable? The legal ground of imputation does not grow stronger with greater distance. The answer of the other side runs that in Adam mankind was not merely represented but really contained — yet with that a statement is made about human nature which Scripture does not make in this way and which is hard to think: a will that does not yet exist cannot have willed. Sozzini sets against it a cleaner assignment: from Adam comes death, for penalties extend to descendants; from each man himself comes guilt, for guilt presupposes action. The Racovian Catechism adds that a single act of Adam did not possess the power to corrupt the nature of his descendants, and that God nowhere imposed such a penalty. Thus Jeremiah’s principle remains untouched and the experience of mortality is explained at the same time.

4. “If there is no inherited guilt, why do children die?”

This objection touches the most sensitive point, and the Socinian answer does not evade it. It consists in the distinction Sozzini expressly formulates: the penalty imposed upon Adam concerns his whole posterity, without regard to their sin, solely because it descends from him. Mortality is therefore an inheritance — but an inheritance of mortality, not of worthiness of damnation. The Racovian Catechism goes a step further and teaches that man was created mortal from the beginning and could live permanently only by divine grace; the loss of this access, not the acquisition of a guilt, is the consequence of the fall. With that the question is answered without ascribing anything to the child: it dies because it is born mortal, not because it stands accused. And Jeremiah’s sentence remains true precisely in the sense in which it is meant — it treats of dying as punishment, of the judgement upon agents, not of the natural history of the body. That it is exactly at this point that the doctrine of original sin reaches its greatest harshness — the damnation of unbaptised children — was for the Socinians no side thought, but an indication that something is wrong at its root.

5. “Paul teaches in Romans 5 that through one man sin came into the world”

The precedence of the apostle is not disputed at all; what is disputed is the interpretation. The Racovian Catechism shows that the chain hangs on a single Greek expression: eph’ hō, which the Vulgate rendered “in whom” and thereby made Adam the place in which all were said to have sinned. Grammatically this connection is scarcely tenable, since Adam is named far earlier and cannot be supplied from the immediately preceding words; the usual parallels — Romans 8:3; 2 Corinthians 5:4; Hebrews 2:18 — require “inasmuch as” or “because.” Decisive, however, is the sequel in Paul himself: “but sin is not counted where there is no law.” A sin that is not counted without law cannot be the one that clings to man without any doing of his own. What Paul teaches is accordingly the reign of death from Adam — and Socinianism teaches it with him. Sozzini himself points out that in the great indictment of Romans 1-3, where the apostle convicts Jews and Gentiles of sin, he accuses neither Adam nor a corrupted nature, but imputes the guilt to those who sinned. That, however, is Jeremiah’s sentence in apostolic prose.

Related verses

The following passages support, deepen or contrast with the interpretation presented here:

• Ezekiel 18:20 — “The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father”: the most express formulation of the principle.
• Ezekiel 18:4 — “All souls are mine”: the grounding of the individual principle in the Creator’s right.
• Deuteronomy 24:16 — the same rule as an instruction to the judges of Israel.
• 2 Chronicles 25:4 — the application of the principle in a concrete legal case.
• Romans 5:12 — “because all sinned”: the chief passage of the other side and its philological examination.
• 1 Corinthians 15:22 — “in Adam all die”: the inheritance of death, not of guilt.
• Romans 2:6 — “to each one according to his works”: the measure of the judgement.
• John 9:2-3 — Jesus denies both alternatives of the question of inherited guilt.
• Genesis 8:21 — the evil inclination “from his youth” as a ground of divine forbearance.
• Psalm 51:5 — “in sin did my mother conceive me”: penitential prayer or doctrinal proposition?
• Ephesians 2:3 — “by nature children of wrath”: origin or habit?

Summary

Jeremiah 31:29-30 is a short text with a sharp edge. It takes up a proverb that explained to the generation of the exile its situation, and announces that it will fall silent. In its place comes a sentence that already stood in the same form in the law and that a second prophet impressed at the same time with a divine oath: whoever dies, dies for his own iniquity. What is not denied is the experience that the deeds of the fathers reach into the lives of the children; what is denied is that a guilt before God arises from it.

Fausto Sozzini placed this passage at the head of his proofs when he speaks of original sin as an “invention” that came into the church not out of Scripture but against it. His argument is not merely legal but bound to Scripture: he appeals to the fact that “God himself has affirmed” that the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father. The Racovian Catechism carries the same line further, examines the counter-proofs from the Psalms and the Letter to the Romans, and shows that they treat of real, voluntary sinning.

What remains is an order of great clarity. From Adam comes mortality; it touches all, even those who have done nothing, for penalties extend to descendants. From each individual comes guilt; it touches only the one who acts, for guilt presupposes action. Between the two runs the boundary Jeremiah draws — and immediately behind it the new covenant begins, which writes the law on the heart and remembers iniquity no more. The verse clears the ground on which the promise can stand: where no one pays any longer for another’s grapes, each can be forgiven his own guilt.