Homilies on the Epistle to the Hebrews

^6. “And they shall not teach” (he says) “every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know Me from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.” Behold also another sign. “From the least even to the greatest of them” (he says) “they shall know Me, and they shall not say, Know the Lord.” When has this been fulfilled save now? For our [religion] is manifest: but theirs [i.e. the Jews'] was not manifest, but had been shut up in a corner.

[A covenant] is then said to be “new,” when it is different and shows some advantage over the old. “Nay surely,” says one, “it is new also when part of it has been taken away, and part not. For instance, when an old house is ready to fall down, if a person leaving the whole, has patched up the foundation, straightway we say, he has made it new, when he has taken some parts away, and brought others into their place. For even the heaven also is thus called 'new,' when it is no longer 'of brass,' but gives rain; and the earth likewise is new when it is not un fruitful, not when it has been changed; and the house is likewise new, when portions of it have been taken away, and portions remain. And thus, he says, he has well termed it 'a New Covenant.'”

If then I show that that covenant had become “Old” in this respect, that it yielded no fruit? And that you may know this exactly, read what Haggai says, what Zechariah, what the Messenger, when the return from the Captivity had not yet fully taken place; and what Esdras charges. How then did [the people] receive him? And how no man enquired of the Lord, inasmuch as they [the priests] themselves also transgressed, and knew it not even themselves? Do you see how your [interpretation] is broken down, while I maintain my own: that this [covenant] must be called “New” in the proper sense of the word?

And besides, I do not concede that the words “the heaven shall be new”, were spoken concerning this. For why, when saying in Deuteronomy “the heaven shall be of brass,” did he not set down this in the contrasted passage, “but if you hearken, it shall be new.”

And further on this account He says that He will give “another Covenant, because they did not continue in the first.” This I show by what he says (“For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh,” Romans 8:3; and again, “Why do you tempt God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?”) But “they did not continue therein,” he says.

Here he shows that [God] counts us worthy of greater and of spiritual [privileges]: for it is said “their sound went out into all the earth and their words unto the ends of the world.” That is [the meaning of] “they shall not say each man to his neighbor, Know the Lord.” And again, “the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as much water to cover the seas.”