therefore not only the great presupposition of men’s relations with God constitutive of all their life, but it is the decisive and eternal deed of God’s love which makes the ground of men’s approach to God an act and a promise in which He is irrevocably committed. Ultimately, as Hosea and Jeremiah see it, it means the establishment of a new covenant, contrary to men’s expectations, not one in which the divine command forms the basis of men’s relations with God, but one in which the divine self-commitment