Jeremiah 34:19
The princes of Judah, and the princes of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, and the priests, and all the people of the land, which passed between the parts of the calf; The princes of Judah, and the princes of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, and the priests, and all the people of the land, which passed between the parts of the calf;
The verse lists the princes of Judah and the princes of Jerusalem, the eunuchs or officials, the priests, and all the people of the land as those who passed between the parts of a divided calf when making a covenant. It stands in Jeremiah 22-39, a section not in chronological order, with chapter 34 coming chronologically after chapter 21 and before chapter 37, among Messianic prophecies that look through the restoration from Babylon to the more glorious restoration under Christ. The covenant was a pledge to release enslaved servants, a release that had not been carried out since the time of Moses, and the verse is part of the indictment against the Jews for oppression and enslavement before Jerusalem's destruction by Nebuchadnezzar. Passing between the separated pieces was the Hebrew custom for making a real covenant; it ratified the agreement and meant each party invoked the victim's fate upon himself, deserving to be killed in the same way if he violated it. This two-sided passing is different from the ceremony with Abraham, where only God passed through the pieces in the form of cloud, smoke, and fire while Abraham was a passive spectator, because that was not strictly a mutual covenant but a promise on God's part given under the form of a covenant.
The divided-animal sacrifice marks it as a covenant of liberty, identifying Abraham's sacrifice as the same kind of covenant and connecting its meaning with freedom from the bondage of sin through Christ. The covenant recalled through Jeremiah was connected to the covenant God made with Abraham 1,323 years earlier, before Israel became a nation, and Abraham is the father of those who believe in Christ by faith. Breaking the covenant brought the judgment described in the surrounding verses, as disobedience to the commands protecting servants brought God's judgment fulfilled in Nebuchadnezzar's destruction and captivity of the state. The chapter shows that owning slaves was never pleasing to God, but was a permitted practice that violated the moral law and was later set aside.