What Does Jeremiah 31:38 Mean?

(38) **From the tower of Hananeel unto the gate** **of the corner.**—There seems to us something almost like an anti-climax in this sudden transition from the loftiest Gospel promises to the obscure localities of the ancient Jerusalem. With Jeremiah, however, as before with Isaiah (Isaiah 65:17-25), and on a much larger scale with Ezekiel (Ezekiel 40-48), this was the natural outgrowth of the vividness with which the restored city came before his mental vision. He saw a goodly city rise as from the ruins of the old, truly and not in name only consecrated to Jehovah, and describes, as best he can, how it differed from them. The tower of Hananeel appears from Nehemiah 3:1; Nehemiah 12:39, to have been identical, or connected, with the tower of Meah, and to have been between the fish-gate and the sheep-gate, at the north-east corner of the city walls. It is named again, as one of the conspicuous landmarks of the city, in Zechariah 14:10. The “corner-gate” at the north-west corner, and near the present Jaffa-gate, appears in 2Kings 14:13; 2Chronicles 26:9; Zechariah 14:10; Nehemiah 3:24; Nehemiah 3:32. The wall in this quarter had apparently been battered during the siege of Jerusalem, and the prophet naturally sees the rebuilding of the wall as among the first-fruits of the restoration.