Angus Harley
“ “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” ” (Jer.31:33)
John Walton- to some the greatest living OT Evangelical scholar- thinks pagan divination does help us to understand Jeremiah 31:33. I think he engages in a false hermeneutic that gives priority to ANE practices and clearly undermines the bible’s content.
Walton and his extispicy interpretation
Extispicy
Walton is in heavily into the belief that what is called the pagan practice of ‘extispicy’ is behind Jeremiah’s comment in Jeremiah 31:33. I will quote Walton as to what extispicy is:
“Extispicy was considered one of the most reliable forms of divination and was often used to verify omens from other sources.”
Extispicy, says Walton, made occultic “readings…from eternal organs” of animals. These organs were “instruments of communication”. Pagan worshipers would seek knowledge from the gods, and the gods responded by placing a message in the entrails of the animal. The diviner would then read and interpret the entrails. An ancient version of reading tea leaves.[1]
Jeremiah 31:33 points to extispicy!
Walton says this about the language of Jeremiah 31:33:
“Instead, the terminology draws our attention to the divination texts in that here in Jeremiah we have several lines in which each element finds parallels in the omen literature.”
Walton’s qualification
Walton tells the reader that Jeremiah 31:33 is not actually a form of divination literature. He’s merely looking to comparisons between both texts (ANE and biblical). He states his aim:
“The comparative question concerns only whether the text is adapting the terminology/metaphor of revelation through the exta for its own theological expressions. Such a metaphor parallel would find support in the genre overlap between divination and prophecy.
If a comparison could be drawn on the basis of the overlap in terminology and genre functions, what would the resulting interpretation look like and how would it differ from the traditional consensus reading?”
Walton’s defense
Walton unfolds his claim concerning v33. I will quote extensively Walton’s position.
Similar language
He writes:
“1. Jeremiah uses the same sorts of verbs (natan, NIV “put”; and katab, NIV “write”) as the extispicy texts.
2. The verbs are followed by a preposition that takes a word connected with the exta as its object (qereb, NIV “minds”; technically, the intestines; leb, NIV “heart”). As I. Starr observes, “The metaphor of the entrails in general and the liver in particular as the ‘writing pad’ of the gods is well attested.”
3. Jeremiah speaks of the torah being written on the heart, which is comparable to the diviners requesting that the deities write a verdict or judgment (dinu) or an oracle (têrtu). These are all ways of referring to the revelation that is expected from the deity.”
Connected by knowledge
To Walton, the connection lies in the fact that Yahweh writes his law “on the heart of Israel”, providing guidance, similar to the gods who, by extispicy, provided guidance on big issues:
“The revelation that is sought out in extispicy proceedings is for guidance in major decisions and understanding of the intentions and will of deity. If Yahweh were writing the torah on the heart of Israel, he would be providing the same sort of guidance in major decisions and in understanding the will of Yahweh.”
The two laws compared
Walton does not stop at this, and further interprets the effects of extispicy to explain the difference between the law as given by Moses and the law spoken of in Jeremiah 31:
“How would this be any different from the revelation of the torah in the Pentateuch that also had knowledge of God as its objective? That is, how does having the torah written on the heart differ from having it written on stone tablets? If the metaphor is from the world of extispicy, the text indicates that with God’s instructions/law written on the heart of his people, there would be no need for continuing guidance to teach God’s law. This had been an essential element in the Sinaitic law. What would happen instead? God would be known through his people who would be living out the law faithfully. People with the law written on their heart become a medium of communication. Writing on the heart replaces not the law, but the teaching of the law. The law on stone had to be taught and could be ignored. The law on the heart represents a medium of modeling, in which case it is not being ignored. In this interpretation of the metaphor, then, the heart is a medium, not a repository. The metaphor would be one of revelation, not of memory.”
Walton’s anti-biblical interpretive control
Tail wagging the dog
Walton thinks that because he maintains that he is not interpreting Jeremiah 31:33 by the ANE practices that he prevents himself from doing so. Yet, this is coming from the pen of a man who said that he was defending the text of Joshua 10:12-13, only to destroy the historical narrative and its miraculous content, to replace it with a reliance on pagan omen theology! The sun and moon did not actually, really, stand still; Joshua’s use of language is borrowed from the ANE ritualism for the sun and moon, and has nothing to do with anything miraculous- so argued Walton.[2] His renditions of Joshua 10 and Jeremiah 31 are straightforward, blatant, cases of ANE theology controlling the biblical text, of eisegesis, of the tail wagging the dog.
Ham sandwich hermeneutic
If one comes at the biblical text with an ANE control- as so many, many do- then one can read anything into the text one wishes. One could read in a ham sandwich, if one were so inclined! How simple is the procedure!
Step 1: find a suitable ANE practice.
Step 2: make sure it has some words or practices that sound in some way similar or familiar to the biblical text.
Step 3: proceed to read into the biblical text all those ANE factors, acts, and elements that one deems to ‘clearly’ get behind the real meaning of the text!
Not a sniff of divination
It is true that Walton maintains that Jeremiah 31:31-34 is not exegetically dependent on any ANE parallels. However, his practice, or exegesis, reveals the contrary. It is evident that there is no reference to divination in context. To go on to argue that Jeremiah is, nevertheless, referencing ANE omen-theology is sheer eisegesis. Matters would have been attenuated a tad if Walton had said that Jeremiah was arguing against pagan omen use; but he does not argue that point. Instead, to Walton, Jeremiah 31:33 is leaning into pagan omen practice to shed light on Jeremiah’s New Covenant meaning. The mind boggles how the pagan practice of extispicy, condemned by the word of God (Lev.19:26; 1 Sam.15:23), could shed a positive light of meaning on an anti-pagan, and exclusively Hebrew, concept such as the New Covenant!
No extispicy terminology
Pressganging language
Are we really to believe that Jeremiah’s use of ‘put’, ‘write’, ‘minds’, and ‘heart’ indicate pagan extispicy? It is not that Walton will take you to how these terms are used in the bible. Then again, why would he go to the bible itself, when his entire aim is to demonstrate how ANE culturally influences the Hebrew text? Walton pressgangs the biblical language in pursuit of his own academic agenda.
Words in context
I’ve always been led to believe that words get their meaning in context, and their ‘role’, or purpose, too. The term qereb indicates a not uncommon Hebrew metaphorical use of the internal nature of man’s soul (e.g., Psa.51:10; Lam.1:20; Eze.11:19; 36:26-27; etc.). It is particularly used in Jeremiah 31:33 to contrast to an external Covenant and its Law that came in the form of stone (see 2 Cor.3). Similarly, Ezekiel 11:19 uses qereb of the internal place in man where Yahweh gives his blessings of a new heart and a new spirit, both of which are set in contrast a stoney heart and the flesh. The term leb (‘heart’) is used time without number in the OT. Indeed, ‘heart’ and ‘within’ or ‘inner’ (qereb) combine in the OT (e.g., Psa.39:3; 55:7; 109:22). And what of natan– another generic term meaning ‘to put’, ‘to give’? It is used with both leb and qereb in Ezekiel 11:19; 36:26; Zechariah 22:9; and Zephaniah 3:5. Are these yet more extispicy texts? And then there are the numerous permutations or combinations of the so-called extispicy terms: are those multiple combos, as found in the OT, reflections of ANE extispicy, too? The simple fact is that the various terms cited by Walton are ‘vanilla’, every day, common expressions for the type of theology Jeremiah has in mind. There’s no ‘hidden’ ANE interpretation under what the reader is given in the Hebrew text and its translation for us.
Let the language and its meaning remain Hebrew!
Let us speak plainly: the ancient Hebrew language is choc-o-bloc full of sentences where words have parallels in other ANE languages. In fact, the same Hebrew sentences have parallels to our times and our own English vocab. For how many of us have used in normal speech, in one sentence, the words, ‘heart’, ‘mind’, ‘put’, and ‘write’? There is no allusion to extispicy in Jeremiah 31:33, and the vocab bears this out, it being sufficiently generic and ‘Hebrew’ to have a meaning that has no resemblance to some ANE omen-religion. It is all about the Hebrew New Covenant!
No 24/7 pagan mindset
Not saturated in ANE knowledge
Whilst it is undoubtedly true that the ancient Hebrews, due to their place in life, had knowledge of some of the ANE ways and practices, and were shamefully at many points given over to pagan practices and theology, they were more than capable of thinking for themselves as Hebrews. The ease with which Walton plucks out ANE religious practices and finds a parallel in the OT gives the opposite impression, however, creating the image of a Hebrew being, whether wittingly or unwittingly, conversant with, even an expert in, all those pagan practices and religions found in the entirety of the ANE!
No uniform mindset
Walton’s system, when pondered, is fundamentally one which argues for a uniform ANE mindset. The implication is surely that the various ANE cultures would know one another’s religious and cultural details inside out. Just how was that possible? In our day, even with the internet and instantaneous knowledge, the vast majority of Christians, including its teachers, are clueless, or relatively so, about many religions. I know this for I teach world religions in a uni. The depths of Hinduism, for example, in any given period of history is such that one part of Hinduism does not entirely know about the other. Let’s take another example- that of Buddhism. Zen Buddhism was a world unto itself, discordant with much of original Buddhism. To say that, even today, the ordinary Buddhist from Nepal is conversant with the details of Zen Buddhism is ridiculous, and perhaps most would not even be aware of Zen Buddhism! ANE religion and culture were gigantic, not monolithic, nor ‘on tap’. We can speak in the singular- ‘religion’ and ‘culture’- not because there was, in reality, one common religious mindset or one common culture- but because it is the way of historical research to use catch-all terms for any period of history.
The Jews didn’t read Walton!
What is alarming is the way Walton’s book implies that the ancient Hebrews must have understood every word written by Walton himself concerning these ANE pagan practices and their influence on the Hebrew text! Who knows in the future how many other ANE ‘influences’ Walton will drag up, and with which the Hebrews will be magically conversant?
Christians don’t need Walton’s ANE expertise!
Yet, the really scary part is this: to properly understand the Hebrew, OT, mindset the assembly, modern Christians, are being pushed topic-by-topic, text-by-text, to rely more and more on ANE theology and its history that, Walton claims, lie behind the Hebrew way of living and thinking. In this setting, it becomes impossible that the ordinary Christian can properly understand the biblical text ‘as is’, for he needs the expert ANE knowledge of a John Walton (books available online at $20-$40 a pop)!
Extispicy: the exact opposite of God’s covenantal model
The world of the Hebrew Covenant
To remind ourselves, Walton writes:
“If the metaphor is from the world of extispicy, the text indicates that with God’s instructions/law written on the heart of his people, there would be no need for continuing guidance to teach God’s law.”
Surely, if the reference is to the world of extispicy, it would have nothing to do, at all, with God’s law being written on the hearts of his new Israel. Extispicy flies-in-the-face of God’s covenantal revelation. Israel was not to go to witches to receive demonically driven ‘revelations’. Yet, we are being asked to believe that the source of all revelation, Yahweh himself, via Jeremiah, the prophet of Yahweh, took up this demonic model to teach Israelites about his own pure, non-demonic, Covenant and its revelation. Jeremiah 31 is covenantal language that has a deep and rich heritage in the Hebrew revelation and culture. Why would Jeremiah need to borrow pagan language and imagery of its form of demonic revelation to convey what is a very, very Hebrew theology of Yahweh’s covenants and their revelation?
Guidance or no?
Using the extispicy setting, Walton, on the one hand, rejects the need for “continuing guidance to teach God’s law”. On the other, Walton asserts:
“The revelation that is sought out in extispicy proceedings is for guidance in major decisions and understanding of the intentions and will of deity. If Yahweh were writing the torah on the heart of Israel, he would be providing the same sort of guidance in major decisions and in understanding the will of Yahweh.”
Make your mind up, Walton! Does Israel need guidance or not? Is Yahweh using a ‘guidance’ metaphor or not? What’s it to be? Playing around with Walton’s model, the Hebrews would not know if they were coming or going, if they were to receive a set body of Covenant revelation, or to look for a continuous flow of it for guidance’ sake!
Failing to understand the point
Of course, the reason why Walton speaks in this contradictory manner is because he is trying his hardest to blend Jeremiah’s plain meaning with the obscure drivel of the ANE practice of extispicy. So much is this so, the most glaring of all facts about Jeremiah’s teaching is utterly ignored by Walton, namely, the entire text of Jeremiah 31:31-34 has nothing to do with ‘guidance’:
“31 “Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. 33 “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34 They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.””
And before anyone attempts to retort, let us reinforce this point by adding that knowledge is not guidance. The entire thrust of Jeremiah 31:31-34 is to teach that Israel of the Old Covenant did not know Yahweh, but Israel of the New Covenant will know him, both as to the law and as to a personal relationship. How so? The former did not have its sins forgiven, the latter did; Old Covenant Israel had an external Law, the New Covenant Israel will have an internal law. Knowledge- not guidance- is where the contrast lies; internal law and its accompaniment of the forgiveness of sins- not guidance- is Jeremiah’s focus.
On a covenantal level, let us, once again, play Walton’s game with him. Which covenant most suits the omen-theology of ANE? It is surely the Old Covenant: it is external, it is not internal or spiritual; it requires those who pursue divine guidance over and over, for they have no true, inner, knowledge of God’s will; and both have animal sacrifices. QED!
Walton’s followers will not be at all persuaded. So, let me put it as simply as I can for their sake: the model of extispicy is concerned with events, days, moments. This is the pagan model of extispicy with its abominable omen practice. An equivalent- if we play again Walton’s game- would be something like the umin and thummim, or seeking God’s advice through a prophet (do you remember Saul and the witch of Endor)? What you would never, ever imagine is to parallel this every day, event-based, process with the creation of a New Covenant. However, Walton bulldozes all distinctive Hebrew religious features to create his own interpretive model based on a religion entirely contrary to biblical revelation.
Two different laws
One final example of his reckless hermeneutic is Walton’s view says that God’s law is the same in both instances, both covenants. How can this be? The Old Covenant had a ‘law’, what we call the Mosaic Law. It incorporated the Ten Commandments. When that Covenant was dismissed, so was the entirety of its Law, including the Ten Commandments. The New Covenant has the law of Christ, which is not the Old Law of Moses in a different pedagogic format! The very essence of the Old Covenant and its Law was its inability to transform the Israelites. It was literally broken on Day 1. The New Covenant law is incapable of being broken, it being created in the hearts of the new Israel by God himself. One law is external, for an external fleshly people. The other is spiritual, internal, for a devoted family of God. Certainly, the categories that constitute a covenant are present in the New Covenant, thus, the similarity in general concepts between both covenants. And if one is wondering what this entails, just read the book of Hebrews. The earthly Law of Moses was no more the New Covenant law of Christ than the earthly tabernacle was the heavenly tabernacle, or the earthly Levitical priesthood the heavenly, Melchizedekian priesthood, or the cultic sacrifice of animals the sacrifice of the Son and its shed blood in heaven. The genius of the New Covenant is that it is, by its nature, heavenly and unbreakable, for it is divinely etched in the hearts of a new and heavenly Israel.
Appeal to faithful Evangelicals
Fans of Walton are typically those Evangelicals who are profoundly uncomfortable with taking Genesis 1-3 at face value, and many other parts of the OT. They are often happy to allow what was traditionally conceived as miraculous to morph into the mundane, based on what non-biblical sources say. Walton’s writings ‘scratch where they itch’, for they struggle to accept the bible’s actual content.
I do not write for them, however. I write for those who take seriously what’s on the page of Scripture, for those who at times feel down and out, who wonder why they remain to stand for God’s word, when many of God’s ‘theologians’ are casting off God’s word, and some of the conservative ones remain silent. You are not alone, brother, sister! Many of us cannot stand Walton and his nonsense. For you I write passionately, for I know exactly how you feel, and you need to read someone write with the same passion you have. You need to know that the fight is worth fighting. Do not give up! Keep fighting for the name of the Lord, for his word!
[1] John Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament, 2nd ed., (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018), 256-258.
[2] Angus Harley, “John Walton’s ham sandwich exegetical method,” All Things New Covenant, June 16, 2026, https://allthingsnewcovenant.com/2026/06/16/john-waltons-ham-sandwich-exegetical-method/.