SCRIPTURE: JEREMIAH 19
The Lord told Jeremiah to buy a clay jar from a potter. Then take along some of the elders of the people and of the priest to go out to the Valley of Ben Hinom, near the entrance of of the Potsherd Gate to proclaim these words to the king of Judah and the people of Jerusalem: “I am going to bring disaster on this place because:
- You have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods. (v. 4a)
- You have burned sacrifices in it to gods that neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah ever knew. (v. 4b)
- You have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. (v. 4c)
- You have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as offerings to Baal. (v. 5)
WHAT GOD WILL DO:
- Topheth or the Valley of Ben Hinnom will be called Valley of Slaughter.
- I will ruin the plans of Judah and Jerusalem. (v. 7a)
- I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies at the hands of those who seek their lives. (v. 7b)
- I will give their carcasses as food to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth. (v. 7c)
- I will devastate this city and make it an object of scorn. (v. 8)
- I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh during the stress of the siege imposed on them by the enemies;. (v. 9)
THEN JEREMIAH BROKE THE JAR AND SAID TO THEM: (vs. 10-13)
“This is what the Lord Almighty says: “I will smash this nation and this city just as this potter’s jar is smashed and cannot be repaired. They will bury the dead in Topheth until there is no more room. This is what I will do to this place and to those who live here, declares the Lord. I will make this city like Topheth. The houses in Jerusalem and those of the kings of Judah will be defiled like this place, Topheth – all the houses where they burned incense on the roofs to all the starry hosts and poured out drink offerings to other gods”
Jeremiah then returned from Topheth and stood in the court of the Lord’s temple and said to all the people. “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel says: “Listen! I am going to bring on this city and the villages around it every disaster I pronounced against them, because they were stiff-necked and would not listen to my words.” (v. 15)
THOUGHTS:
God told Jeremiah to break the vessel to show the nation that they were broken beyond repair. The Valley of Hinnom was a site for pagan worship and the place when children were sacrificed to the god Molech. In Greek, it is Gehenna, the New Testament word for hell”. Topheth means “burning”. Jeremiah gave a new name to the place “The Valley of Slaughter”.
The prophecy of Jeremiah happened twice. In 586 BC during Babylonian invasion under Nebuchadnezzar and in AD 70, when Titus destroyed Jerusalem. During the Babylonian siege, food were scarce and the people became cannibals, eating their own children.