Hebrews 8:9 “It will not be like the covenant that I made with their fathers, on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not continue in my covenant and I had no regard for them, says the Lord.”

There is an translational issue here.

This is one of a handful of places in this quotation from Jeremiah where the LXX differs from the MT.

The issue is that the LXX, on which this quotation is based, appears to have mistranslated the text in Jeremiah 31:32 (‘though I was their husband’).

Luke Timothy Johnson translates the MT text as:

“my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband”

and the LXX as:

“they did not remain in my covenant and I grew unconcerned about them.”

It seems, as Swete suggested back in 1900, that the translator of the LXX read ‘baal‘ (husband, lord), as ‘gaal‘.(‘to despise,’ ‘to abandon’).

Many commentators do not seem minded to attempt to resolve this ‘discrepancy’.  So George Guthrie (Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament), Peterson (TNTC), O’Brien (Pillar) and others.

Calvin briefly notes:

‘the prophet says something a little different in Hebrew, but it is of no concern with the present question.’

The 19th-century translator of Calvin’s commentary suggest that there an error (of one letter) in the Hebrew text, and that the writer to the Hebrews has picked up on a correction of this.

The Apologetics Study Bible offers an explanation which, I suspect, will only satisfy those already convinced of biblical inerrancy (and, therefore, serving little apologetic purpose):

‘Some skeptics charge that the writer of Hebrews here misquoted Jer 31:32 because Heb 8:9 reads, “I disregarded them” instead of “I had married them” as in the OT. But the NT writer of Heb simply cited the Septuagint (Gk translation of the OT) instead of the Hebrew Bible, and when he did, it became part of Scripture.’

Among older commentators, Matthew Poole understands the two readings (MT and LXX) as amounting to pretty much the same thing:

‘The apostle in this follows the Septuagint, who read the effect of their sin, their rejection, for what was their sin itself, which by the prophet is expressed ואזבי בעלתי should I be a Lord or Husband to them; which is an aggravation of their sin from God’s dominion over them or marriage-relation to them; yet did they break his marriage-covenant with them according to their lewd and whorish heart: see Ezek. 16, 23. But in this quotation by the apostle, and translation of the Septuagint, it is a metonymy of the effect for the cause, to reject, cast off, or neglect them for their treachery to him in their marriage-covenant, which was the true cause of it.’

I do not myself feel tied to a doctrine of strict inerrancy.  I am content to leave the apparent discrepancy unresolved, but to agree with Matthew Poole that the difference between the two readings is not great.