JEREMIAH 19 COMMENTARYEDITED BY GLENN PEASE

1 This is what the Lord says: “Go and buy a clay jar from a potter. Take along some of the elders of the people and of the priests

BARNES, "Get (i. e., purchase) a potter’s earthen bottle - The “bottle” was a flask with a long neck, and took its name from the noise made by liquids in running out.

The ancients - These “elders” were the regularly constituted representatives of the people (see Jer_29:1; Num_11:16), and the organization lasted down to our Saviour’s time Mat_26:47. Similarly the priests had also their representatives 2Ki_19:2. Accompanied thus by the representatives of Church and State, the prophet was to carry the earthen bottle, the symbol of their mean origin and frail existence, outside the walls of Jerusalem.

CLARKE, "Go and get a potter’s earthen bottle - This discourse was also delivered some time in the reign of Jehoiakim. Under the type of breaking a potter’s earthen bottle or jug, Jeremiah shows his enemies that the word of the Lord should stand, that Jerusalem should be taken and sacked, and they all carried into captivity.

Ancients of the priests - The chiefs of the twenty-four classes which David had established. See 1Ch_24:4.GILL, "Thus saith the Lord, go and get a potter's earthen bottle,.... From the potter's house, where he had lately been; and where he had been shown, in an emblematic way, what God would do in a short time with the Jews; and which is here further illustrated by this emblem: or, "go and get", or "buy, a bottle of the potter, an earthen one" (k); so Kimchi; called in Hebrew "bakbuk", from the gurgling of the liquor poured into it, or out of it, or drank out of it, which makes a sound like this word (l): and take of the ancients of the people, and of the ancients of the priests; the word "take" is rightly supplied by our translators, as it is by the Targum, the Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic versions; for these words are not to be connected with the former, as in the Vulgate Latin version; as if the prophet was to get or buy the earthen bottle of the elders of the people, and of the priests; but those who were the greatest and principal

1

men of the city, and of which the Jewish sanhedrim consisted, were to be taken by the prophet to be witnesses of what were said and done, to see the bottle broke, and hear what Jeremiah from the Lord had to say; who, from their years, it might be reasonably thought, would seriously attend to those things, and would report them to the people to great advantage; and the Lord, who sent the prophet to them, no doubt inclined their hearts to go along with him; who, otherwise, in all probability, would have refused; and perhaps would have charged him with impertinence and boldness, and would have rejected his motion with contempt, as foolish or mad.

HENRY, "The corruption of man having made it necessary that precept should be upon precept, and line upon line (so unapt are we to receive, and so very apt to let slip, the things of God), the grace of God has provided that there shall be, accordingly, precept upon precept, and line upon line, that those who are irreclaimable may be inexcusable. For this reason the prophet is here sent with a message to the same purport with what he had often delivered, but with some circumstances that might make it the more taken notice of, a thing which ministers should study, for a little circumstance may sometimes be a great advantage, and those that would win souls must be wise.I. He must take of the elders and chief men, both in church and state, to be his auditors and witnesses to what he said - the ancients of the people and the ancients of the priests, the most eminent men both in the magistracy and in the ministry, that they might be faithful witnesses to record, as those Isa_8:2. It is strange that these great men should be at the beck of a poor prophet, and obey his summons to attend him out of the city, they know not whither and they knew not why. But, though the generality of the elders were disaffected to him, yet it is likely that there were some few among them who looked upon him as a prophet of the Lord, and would pay this respect to the heavenly vision. Note, Persons of rank and figure have an opportunity of honouring God, by a diligent attendance on the ministry of the word and other divine institutions; and they ought to think it an honour, and no disparagement to themselves, yea, though the circumstances be mean and despicable. It is certain that the greatest of men is less than the least of the ordinances of God.

JAMISON, "Go and get a potter’s earthen bottle - This discourse was also delivered some time in the reign of Jehoiakim. Under the type of breaking a potter’s earthen bottle or jug, Jeremiah shows his enemies that the word of the Lord should stand, that Jerusalem should be taken and sacked, and they all carried into captivity.

Ancients of the priests - The chiefs of the twenty-four classes which David had established. See 1Ch_24:4.K&D 1-9, "The Broken Pitcher. - Jer_19:1. "Thus said Jahveh: Go and buy a potter's

vessel, and take of the elders of the people and of the elders of the priests, Jer_19:2. And go forth into the valley of Benhinnom, which is before the gate Harsuth, and proclaim there the words which I shall speak unto thee, Jer_19:3. And say: Hear the word of Jahveh, ye kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus hath said Jahveh of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I bring evil upon this place, the which whosoever heareth his ears shall tingle. Jer_19:4. Because they have forsaken me, and disowned this place, and burnt incense in it to other gods whom they knew not, they, and their fathers, and the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocents, 2

Jer_19:5. And have built high places for Baal, to burn their sons in the fire as burnt-offerings to Baal, which I have neither commanded nor spoken, nor came it into my heart. Jer_19:6. Therefore, behold, days come, saith Jahve, that this place shall no longer be called Tophet and Valley of Benhinnom, but Valley of Slaughter. Jer_19:7. And I make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place, and cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies and by the hand of them that seek their lives, and give their carcases to be food for the fowls of the heaven and the beast of the earth. Jer_19:8. And make this city a dismay and a scoffing; every one that passeth thereby shall be dismayed and hiss because of all her strokes; Jer_19:9. And make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and each shall eat his neighbour's flesh in the siege and straitness wherewith their enemies and they that seek after their lives shall straiten them. - Jer_19:10. And break the pitcher before the eyes of the men that go with thee, Jer_19:11. And say to them: Thus hath Jahve of hosts said: Even so will I break this people and this city as one breaketh this potter's vessel, that it cannot be made whole again; and in Tophet shall they bury them, because there is no room to bury. Jer_19:12. Thus will I do unto this place, saith Jahveh, and its inhabitants, to make this city as Tophet. Jer_19:13. And the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah shall become, as the place Tophet, unclean, all the houses upon whose roofs they have burnt incense to the whole host of heaven and poured out drink-offerings to other gods."CALVIN, "We see that the Prophet was sent by God to shew the people that there was no firmness in that state of which hypocrites boasted; for God, who had favored the people of Israel with singular benefits, did no less retain them in his own possession than the potter. The Prophet had before shewn to the Jews that the potter formed his vessels as he pleased, and also, that when he had taken the clay and the vessel did not please him, he formed another. This prophecy has a similar import, yet it is different, as we shall presently see. The Prophet is here bidden to buy an earthen vessel of the potter, and at the meeting of the people to break it, that all might understand that they were like earthen vessels, and that being thus admonished of their fragility, they might no longer be proud, as though they possessed a firm and perpetual state of happiness.The main object of the two visions is, however, the same: for the Jews thought that they were not subject to the common lot of men, because they had been chosen as a peculiar people; nor would they have gloried in vain with regard to that inestimable privilege, had there been a mutual agreement between God and them; but as they were covenant-breakers, their glorying was vain and foolish, in thinking that God was bound to them. For what right had they to claim this privilege? God indeed had adopted the whole race of Abraham, but there was a condition introduced,“Walk before me and be perfect.” (Genesis 17:2)When they all had become apostates, the covenant, as to them, was abolished. Then God could not have been called, as it were, to an account, as though he had violated his covenant with them, for he owed them nothing. They had become aliens; for through their wickedness and perfidy they had departed from him. God then

3

designed to show how vain and how false was their confidence, when they said, “We are a holy race, we are God’s heritage;” because they had wholly departed from the covenant which God had made with their fathers.But in the form adopted, as I have said, there is some difference. The Prophet had before introduced the potter to shew that there was no less power in God than in a mortal man, because we are before him as the clay, so that he can form and destroy his vessels as he pleases: but here the Prophet shews, that though the Jews had been formed for a time, and so formed as to have been like an excellent and a beautiful vessel, yet it was not a perpetual condition. And it is probable that when they had heard that God could, like the potter, form and re-form them, they had devised an evasion, according to what men usually do who deal sophistically with God, — “O, be it so, the potter can from the same clay form both a precious and a worthless vessel; but we are the precious vessel, and God has given us that form; for when he made a covenant with Abraham, he adorned him with this singular distinction: he afterwards brought our fathers out of Egypt, and then there was a better form added; and since at length he raised a kingdom among us with this promise, that the throne of David would be perpetual, it cannot possibly be otherwise than that we are to continue in our state.” Hence the Prophet expresses here more than in the former prophecy, that not only God had the power of a potter in forming his vessels, but that when the vessel is already formed and possesses great splendor, it can again be broken: he stated this lest the Jews should object by saying, that the state in which they were under David and his posterity would be perpetual. He says, “This is nothing: for the earthen vessel, though splendid and elegant in its form, can yet be broken in the third or fourth year no less than at the time when it is formed, and can be broken for ever,” according to what is afterwards implied by the similitude.We shall proceed now to the words: he says, Go and get for thee an earthen vessel. The Rabbins think the name given to the vessel to be factitious, as the grammarians say, that is, made from its sound; for it appears to have been a flagon or a bottle; and as the bottle has a narrow mouth, it makes this sound, בקבק bakbuk, when we drink from it; and hence they think the name is derived. There is, however, no ambiguity as to the thing itself, that the word means a bottle, not only made of earth, but also either of glass or of wood. By adding the word חרש cheresh, he specifies what but בקבק, bekbek, is a general word. He then adds what is literally, From the elders, and interpreters think that the words “bring with thee” are to be understood; and as to the sense I agree with them, for we shall hereafter see, that in the presence of those who went with him he broke the vessel: it then follows that the elders here spoken of were taken by Jeremiah as his companions; but as מ mem, sometimes means “with,” as in the fifty-seventh chapter of Isaiah, (Isaiah 57:8)“and made thee a covenant with them, מהם ”I take it to be of the same meaning here; and this is doubtless suitable here, for he was to go with the elders of the people and with the elders of the priests (211)

4

“Thus saith Jehovah, go and get; bottle from the maker of earthenware, and some of the elders of the people and of the elders of the priests.”The מ, of, or from, before elders, implies a part; and it is the idiom of the language not to put in “some,” — “get (or take) from the elders,” etc. He was first to get the bottle, and then some of the elders. The Vulgate very strangely represents the Prophet as taking the bottle from the elders, omitting the ו, and as taking it from both elders! — Ed COFFMAN, "Verse 1JEREMIAH 19THE SMASHED POTTER'S VESSELThe feature of this little chapter is the irrefutable and irremediable cancellation of the status of racial Israel as God's Chosen People, a status which, by their reprobacy, they forfeited to the New Israel in whom all the glorious prophecies of the fathers would be fulfilled.Here is the parable of the smashed potter's vessel. The previous chapter showed God's patience and ability to accommodate to the imperfections of the clay; but this one stresses a far different lesson. It is no longer possible for even God to work with hardened Israel.The symbol here is a potter's vessel; but one that has already been fired and hardened, a perfect symbol of the judicial hardening of Racial Israel, which, as Isaiah stated, had already taken place a full century before Jeremiah came upon the scene (Isaiah 6).It was a new vessel, one just purchased, which means that it was empty. This symbolized the fact of the emptiness of the racial Israel and their complete failure to produce the righteous works which God desired.The shattering of the vessel symbolized the divorce and casting off of racial Israel as God's wife and as God's chosen people.There was no known way by which such a shattered vessel could be mended or repaired, and this symbolized the final, total, and irreversible nature of Israel's rejection, always with the exception of the "righteous remnant" destined to form the nucleus of the New Israel in the kingdom of Messiah.Laden with such a terrible message, the events recorded here resulted in bitter persecution for Jeremiah; and Satan still releases his fulminations against what is written here: affirming that, "it is not written in Jeremiah's style";[1] "It was probably written by Baruch";[2] "It is conjectured that certain verses were added

5

later by an editor";[3] (regrettably, Ash neglected to tell us whether this was his opinion or the opinion of unbelieving critics), stating that, "the reader can judge" the matter: Very well, this reader will judge such allegations; and the judgment is simple enough: such postulations are worthless.(1) The claim that the style here is different actually refers to the fact that the third person is used instead of the first; and there's nothing unusual about that. Barnes declared that such an objection belongs to the "babyhood of criticism," and that, "It is the exception when any sacred writer refers to himself in the first person."[4] In our introduction to Jonah (see the Minor Prophets, Vol. 1) we discussed this fully, pp. 261-263. Also, Jeremiah would, in a moment, quote verbatim from Moses the author of Deuteronomy; and since Moses invariably referred to himself in the third person, it was quite natural and should have been expected that Jeremiah would also use the third person here.(2) Ash's reference to "an editor" comes from the assertion of some critics that "the Deuteronomic editor" has influenced this chapter, as if such an imaginary figure were in any sense a real person, which he was not. Moses wrote Deuteronomy, not some editor; and it is not that imaginary editor that influenced this chapter but Moses himself. "Jeremiah 19:9 is quoted almost literally from Deuteronomy 28:33."[5] This fully accounts for the alleged influence of "some Deuteronomic editor," that influence pertaining to Moses the author of the Pentateuch.(3) In a more positive attitude, the style of Jeremiah is most evident in this chapter and is seen in the scrambling of his subject matter, a characteristic of the whole prophecy. Green pointed out that, "Jeremiah 19:1,2,10,11 deal with the destruction of Israel, and Jeremiah 19:3-9 and Jeremiah 19:12-13 are portions of the sermon!"[6] Nothing could be any more Jeremiahic than such an arrangement. This total lack of any usual type of organization requires us to look at the chapter only one or two verses at a time.Before leaving this discussion of the allegations about `interpolations, etc.' in this chapter, we summarize it by this quotation from F. Cawley and A. R. Millard, who rejected all such changes, writing, "There is insufficient reason for treating Jeremiah 19:3-9 as insertions."[7]Jeremiah 19:1-2"Thus saith Jehovah, Go, and buy a potter's earthen bottle, and take of the elders of the people, and of the elders of the priests; and go forth unto the valley of the son of Hinnom, which is by the entry of the gate Harsith, and there proclaim the words that I shall tell thee."Other occasions when the actions of Jeremiah became a part of his message are: the Marred Girdle (Jeremiah 13), his Abstinence from Marriage (Jeremiah 16), the Potter's Clay (Jeremiah 18), the Bonds and Bars (Jeremiah 27), and his Buying a

6

Field (Jeremiah 32).See chapter heading above for the meaning of this symbol; but there are additional teachings evident here. The fact of the bottle's being "earthen" symbolized the humble beginnings of Israel; the delicate design and value of the bottle symbolized Israel's earlier glory; and, if, as some allege, it was a very cheap and fragile bottle, it symbolized the vulnerability of the nation of Israel. It would be difficult indeed to think of a metaphor as effective as this one.Furthermore, the very place where this sermon would be preached and where the bottle would be shattered carry their own implications. The gate mentioned here is hard to identify. "Two gates led to the valley of the son of Hinnom: (1) the Fountain Gate at the southeast corner, and the Dung Gate at the southwest corner of Zion. Keil could not decide which was meant here; and Kimchi thought it was neither, but a small, postern gate, used for throwing out rubbish, the valley having been put to this degrading use from the time when Josiah defiled it (2 Kings 23:10). And thus the mean symbol of a proud nation was carried out through the back door to be broken upon the heaps of rubbish already there."[8]"Of the elders ... of the priests ..." (Jeremiah 19:1). "These were probably prominent members of the Sanhedrin, representatives of the whole people."[9]"The valley of the son of Hinnom ..." (Jeremiah 19:2). Some scholars write this: "Valley of Ben-hinnom," which means the same thing. It was located south of Jerusalem and was the location of the shrine of Molech, where the infants were burned as sacrifices to that god; after Josiah defiled the place, it was used for burning garbage and cremating the bodies of dead criminals.[10]The potter's field was just a little southward, and it was there that Judas Iscariot who betrayed the Lord committed suicide.TRAPP, " Thus saith the LORD, Go and get a potter’s earthen bottle, and [take] of the ancients of the people, and of the ancients of the priests;Ver. 1. Thus saith the Lord.] By the former type of a potter and his vessel, God had showed the Jews what he could do to them - viz., break them at his pleasure, and remake them upon their repentance. Here, by a like prophetic paradigm, is set forth what the Lord now will do to them - viz., break them so for their obstinace, as that they should never be repaired, and restored to their ancient lustre and flourish. And this the prophet Jeremiah ( fortissimus ille Dei athleta, as one calleth him) that valiant champion of the Lord, telleth them freely, though he kissed the stocks and was well beaten for his boldness. [Jeremiah 20:2] Where it is worthy our observation, that as the prophet’s task was more and more increased, so was his strength and courage. Deus gratiam multiplicat onere ingravescente. So it was with

7

Athanasius, Luther, Latimer, Calvin, &c.Go and get a potter’s earthen bottle.] Called in Hebrew Bakbuk, (a) either from the emptiness and hollowness of it, or else from the guggling sound that it made when it was either filled or emptied. By a like figure it is said of the vulturine eagle, [Job 39:30] that they do glutglut blood. (b)And take of the ancients.] Of both sorts for witnesses. EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE COMMENTARY, "THE BROKEN VESSEL - A SYMBOL OF JUDGMENTJeremiah 19:1-15THE result of his former address, founded upon the procedure of the potter, had only been to bring out into clearer distinctness the appalling extent of the national corruption. It was evident that Judah was incorrigible, and the Potter’s vessel must be broken in pieces by its Maker."Thus said Iahvah: Go and buy a bottle" (baqbuq, as if "a pour pour"; the meaning is alluded to in the first word of Jeremiah 19:7 : ubaqqothi, " and I will pour out") "of a moulder of pottery" so the accents; but perhaps the Vulgate is right: "lagunculam figuli testeam," "a potter’s earthen vessel," A.V.; lit. a potter’s bottle, viz., earthenware), "and" (take: LXX rightly adds) "some of the elders of the people and of the elders of the priests, and go out into the valley of ben Hinnom at the entry of the Pottery Gate" (a postern, where broken earthenware and rubbish were shot forth into the valley: the term is connected with that for "pottery," Jeremiah 19:1, which is the same as that in Job 2:8), "and cry there the words that I shall speak unto thee,"-Jeremiah does not pause here, to relate how he followed the Divine impulse, but goes on at once to communicate the tenor of the Divine "words"; a circumstance which points to the fact that this narrative was only written some time after the symbolical action which it records; "and say thou, Hear ye Iahvah’s word, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem! Thus said Iahvah Sabaoth, the God of Israel: Lo, I am about to bring an evil upon this place, such that, whoever heareth it, his ears shall tingle!" If we suppose, as seems likely, that this series of oracles (Jeremiah 18:1-23; Jeremiah 19:1-15; Jeremiah 20:1-18) belongs to the reign of Jehoiachin, the expression "kings of Judah" may denote that king and the queen mother. Another view is that the kings of Judah in general are addressed "as an indefinite class of persons," here and elsewhere, [Jeremiah 17:20; Jeremiah 22:4] because the prophet did not write the main portion of his book until after the siege of Jerusalem (Ewald). The announcement of this verse is quoted by the compiler of Kings in relation to the crimes of king Manasseh. [2 Kings 21:12]"Because that they forsook Me, and made this place strange"-alienated it from Iahvah by consecrating it to "strange gods"; or, as the Targum and Syriac, "polluted" it-"and burnt incense therein to other gods, whom neither they nor their

8

fathers knew"; [Jeremiah 16:13] "and the kings of Judah did fill this place with blood of innocents" (so the LXX "Nor the kings of Judah" gives a poor sense; they are included in the preceding phrase), "and built the bamoth Baal" (High places of Baal; a proper name), [Joshua 13:17] "to burn their sons in the fire," ("as burnt offerings to the Baal"; LXX omits, and it is wanting, Jeremiah 7:31, Jeremiah 32:35. It may be a gloss, but is probably genuine, as there are slight variations in each passage), "which I commanded not" ("nor spake": LXX omits), "neither came it into My mind: therefore, behold days are coming, saith Iahvah, when this place will no more be called the Tophet and valley of ben Hinnom but the Valley of Slaughter!" ("and in Tophet shall they bury, so that there be"-remain-"no room to bury!" This clause, preserved at the end of Jeremiah 19:11, but omitted there by the LXX, probably belongs here). "And I will pour out" [Isaiah 19:3] "the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place"-that is, I will empty the land of all wisdom and resourcefulness, as one empties a bottle of its water, so that the heads of the state shall be powerless to devise any effectual scheme of defence in the face of calamity {cf. Jeremiah 13:13} -"and I will cause them to fall by the sword ‘before their enemies"’, [Deuteronomy 28:25] "and by the hand of them that seek their life; and I will make ‘their carcases food unto the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth"’ (Deuteronomy 28:26; Jeremiah 7:33, Jeremiah 16:4). "And I will set this city ‘for an astonishment"’ [Deuteronomy 28:37] "and a hissing"; [Deuteronomy 18:16] "every one that passeth by her shall be astonished and hiss at all her ‘strokes"’ [Jeremiah 49:17; Jeremiah 1:13] or "plagues." [Deuteronomy 28:59] "And I will cause them to ‘eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters,’ and each the flesh of his fellow shall they eat-‘in the stress and the straitness wherewith their enemies’ and they that seek their life ‘shall straiten them."’ It will be seen from the references that the Deuteronomic colouring of these closing threats (Jeremiah 19:7-9) is very strong, the last verse being practically a quotation. [Deuteronomy 28:53] The effect of the whole oracle would thus be to suggest that the terrible sanctions of the sacred Law would not remain inoperative; but that the shameless violation of the solemn covenant under Josiah, by which the nation undertook to observe the code of Deuteronomy, would soon be visited with the retributive calamities so vividly foreshadowed in that book."And break thou the bottle, to the eyes of the men that go with thee, and say unto them: Thus said Iahvah Sabaoth; So will I break this people and this cry, as one breaketh the potter’s vessel so that it cannot be mended again! Thus will I do to this place, saith Iahvah, and to the inhabitants thereof, and make" (infin. constr), as in Jeremiah 17:10, continuing the mood and person of the preceding verb; which is properly a function of the infin, absol., as in Jeremiah 19:13) "this city like a Tophet"-make it one huge altar of human sacrifice, a burning place for thousands of human victims. "And the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah"-the palace of David and Solomon, in which king after king had reigned, and "done the evil in Iahvah’s eyes,"-"shall become like the place of the Tophet, the defiled ones! even all the houses upon the roofs of which they burnt incense unto all the host of heaven, and poured outpourings" (libations of wine and honey) "unto other gods." (So the Hebrews punctuation, which seems to give a very good sense.

9

The principal houses those of the kings and grandees, are called "the defiled," because their roofs especially have been polluted with idolatrous rites. The last clause of the verse explains the epithet, which might have been referred to "the kings of Judah," had it preceded "like the place of the Tophet." The houses were not to become "defiled"; they were already so, past all cleansing; they were to be destroyed with fire, and in their destruction to become the Tophet or sacrificial pyre of their inhabitants. We need not, therefore, read "Tophteh," after Isaiah 30:33, as I at first thought of doing, to find afterwards that Ewald had already suggested it. The term rendered "even all," is lit. "unto all," that is, "including all." {cf. Ezekiel 44:9}The command "and break thou the bottle and say unto them" compared with that of Jeremiah 19:2, "and cry there the words that I shall speak unto thee!" seems to indicate the proper point of view from which the whole piece is to be regarded. Jeremiah is recalling and describing a particular episode in his past ministry; and he includes the whole of it, with the attendant circumstances and all that he said, first to the elders in the vale of ben Hinnom, and then to the people assembled in the temple, under the comprehensive "Thus said Iahvah!" with which he begins his narrative. In other words, he affirms that he was throughout the entire occurrence guided by the impulses of the Spirit of God. It is very possible that the longer first address (Jeremiah 19:2-9) really gives the substance of what he said to the people in the temple on his return from the valley, which is merely summarised in Jeremiah 19:15."And Jeremiah came in"-into the temple "from the Tophet, whither Iahvah had sent him to prophesy, and took his stand in the court of Iahvah’s House; and said unto all the people: Thus said Iahvah Sabaoth Israel’s God; Lo, I am about to bring upon" (Jeremiah 19:3) "this city and upon all her cities" ("and upon her villages": LXX adds) "all the evil that I have spoken concerning her; because they stiffened their neck," [Jeremiah 7:26] "not to hear My words!" In this apparent epitome of His discourse to the people in the temple, the prophet seems to sum up all his past labours, in view of an impending crisis. "All the evil" spoken hitherto concerning Jerusalem is upon the point of being accomplished. {cf. Jeremiah 25:3}In reviewing the entire oracle, we may note as in former instances, the care with which all the circumstances of the symbolical action are chosen, in order to enhance the effect of it upon the minds of the witnesses. The Oriental mind delights in everything that partakes of the nature of an enigma; it loves to be called upon to unravel the meaning of dark sentences, and to disentangle the wisdom wrapped up in riddling words and significant actions. It would have found eloquence in Tarquin’s unspoken answer to his son’s messenger. "Rex velut deliberabundus in hortum aedium transit, sequente nuncio filii: ibi inambulans tacitus summa papaverum capita dicitur baculo decussisse" (Liv. 1:54). No doubt Jeremiah’s companions would watch his every step, and would not miss the fact that he carried his earthenware vessel out of the city by the "Sherd Gate." Here was a vessel yet whole, treated as though it were already a shattered heap of fragments! They would

10

be prepared for the oracle in the valley.It is worth while, by the way, to notice who those companions were. They were certain of "the elders of the people" and of "the elders of the priests." Jeremiah, it seems, was no wild revolutionary dreamer and schemer, whose hand and voice were against all established authority in Church and State. This was not the character of the Hebrew prophets in general, though some writers have conceived thus of them. There is no evidence that Jeremiah ever sought to divest himself of the duties and privileges of his hereditary priesthood; or that he looked upon the monarchy and the priestly guilds and the entire social organisation of Israel, as other than institutions divinely originated and divinely preserved through all the ages of the national history. He did not believe that man created these institutions, though experience taught him that man might abuse and pervert them from their lawful uses. His aim was always to reform, to restore, to lead the people back to "the old paths" of primitive simplicity and rectitude; not to abolish hereditary institutions, and substitute for the order which had become an integral part of the national life, some brand new constitution which had never been tried, and would be no more likely to fit the body corporate than the armour of Saul fitted the free limbs of the young shepherd who was to slay Goliath.The prophets never called for the abolition of those laws and customs, civil and ecclesiastical, which were the very framework of the state, and the pillars of the social edifice. They did not cry, "Down with kings and priests!" but to both kings and priests they cried, "Hear ye Iahvah’s word!" And all experience proves that they were right. Paper constitutions have never yet redeemed a nation from its vices, nor delivered a community from the impotence and the decay which are the inevitable fruits of moral corruption. Arbitrary legislative changes will not alter the inward condition of a people; covetousness and hypocrisy, pride and selfishness, intemperance and uncleanness and cruelty, may be as rampant in a commonwealth as in a kingdom.The contents of the oracle are much what we have had many times already. The chief difference lies in a calm definiteness of assurance, a tone of distinct certitude, as though the end were so near at hand as to leave no room for doubt or hesitation. And this difference is fittingly and impressively suggested by the particular symbol chosen-the shattering of an earthenware vessel, beyond the possibility of repair. The direct mention of the king of Babylon and the Babylonian captivity, in the sequel (chapter 20), points to the presence of a Babylonian invasion, probably that which ended with the exile of Jeconiah and the chief citizens of Jerusalem.The fatal sin, from which the oracle starts and to which it returns, is forsaking Iahvah, and making the city of His choice "strange" to Him, that is, hateful and unclean, by contact with foreign and bloody superstitions, which were even falsely declared by their promoters to be pleasing to Iahvah, the Avenger of innocent blood! [Jeremiah 7:31] The punishment corresponds to the offence. The sacrifices of blood will be requited with blood, shed in torrents on the very spot which had been

11

so foully polluted; they who had not scrupled to slay their children for the sacrifice, were to slay them again for food under the stress of siege and famine; the city and its houses, defiled with the foreign worships, will become one vast Molech fire, [Jeremiah 32:35] in which all will perish together.It may strike a modern reader that there is something repulsive and cold blooded in this detailed enumeration of appalling horrors. But not only is it the case that Jeremiah is quoting from the Book of the Law, at a time when, to an unprejudiced eye, there was every likelihood that the course of events would verify his dark forebodings; in the dreadful experience of those times such incidents as those mentioned (Jeremiah 19:9) were familiar occurrences in the obstinate defence and protracted sufferings of beleaguered cities. The prophet, therefore, simply affirms that obstinate persistence in following their own counsels and rejecting the higher guidance will bring upon the nation its irretrievable ruin. We know that in the last siege he did his utmost to prevent the occurrence of these unnatural horrors by urging surrender; but then, as always, the people "stiffened their neck, not to hear Iahvah’s words."Jeremiah knew his countrymen well. No phrase could have better described the resolute obstinacy of the national character. How were the headstrong, self-will, the inveterate sensuality, the blind tenacity of fanatical and non-moral conceptions which characterised this people, to be purified and made serviceable in the interests of true religion, except by means of the fiery ordeal which all the prophets foresaw and foretold? As we have seen, polytheism exercised upon the popular mind a spell which we can hardly comprehend from our modern point of view; a polytheism foul and murderous, which violated the tenderest affections of our nature by demanding of the father the sacrifice of his child, and violated the very instinct of natural purity by the shameless indulgence of its worship. It was a consecration of lust and cruelty, -that worship of Molech, those rites of the Baals and Asheras. Meagre and monotonous as the sacred records may on these heads appear to be, their witness is supplemented by other sources, by the monuments of Babylon and Phoenicia.It is hard to see how the religious instinct of men in this peculiar stage of belief and practice was to be enlightened and purified in any other way than the actual course of Providence. What arguments can be imagined that would have appealed to minds which found a fatal fascination, nay, we must suppose an intense satisfaction, in rites so hideous that one durst not even describe them; minds to which the lofty monotheism of Amos, the splendid eloquence of an Isaiah, the plaintive lyrical strain of a Jeremiah, appealed in vain? Appeals to the order of the world, to the wonders of organic life, were lost upon minds which made gods of the most obvious subjects of that order, the sun, moon, and stars; which even personified and adored the physical principle whereby the succession of life after life is perpetuated.Nothing short of the perception "that the word of the prophets had come to pass," the recognition, therefore, that the prophetic idea of God was the true idea, could have succeeded in keeping the remnant of Judah safe from the contagion of

12

surrounding heathenism in the land of their exile, and in radically transforming once for all the religious tendencies of the Jewish race.In Jeremiah’s view, the heinousness of Judah’s idolatry is heightened by the consideration that the gods of their choice are gods "whom neither they nor their fathers knew" (Jeremiah 19:4). The kings Ahaz, Manasseh, Amon, had introduced novel rites, and departed from "the old paths" more decidedly than any of their predecessors. In this connection, we may remember that, while modern Romish controversialists do not scruple to accuse the Church of this country with having unlawfully innovated at the Reformation, the Anglican appeal has always been to Scripture and primitive antiquity. Such, too, was the appeal of the prophets. [Hosea 6:1; Hosea 6:7; Hosea 11:1;, Jeremiah 2:2; Jeremiah 6:16; Jeremiah 11:3] It is the glory of our Church, aglory of which neither the lies of Jesuits nor the envy of the sectaries can rob her, that she returned to "the old paths," boldly overleaping the dark ages of mediaeval ignorance, imposture, and corruption, and planting her foot firmly on the rock of apostolic practice and the consent of the undivided Church.Disunion among Christians is a sore evil, but union in the maintenance and propaganda of falsehood is a worse; and the guilt of disunion lies at the door of that system which abused its authority to crush out legitimate freedom of thought, to retard the advancement of learning, and to establish those monstrous innovations in doctrine and worship, which subtle dialecticians may prove to their own satisfaction to be innocent and non-idolatrous in essence and intention, though all the world can see that in practice they are grossly idolatrous. God preserve England from that toleration of serious error, which is so easy to sceptical indifference! God preserve her from lending an ear to the siren voices that would seduce her to yield her hard won independence, her noble freedom, her manly rational piety, to the unhistorical and unscriptural claims of the Papacy!If we reverence those Scriptures of the Old Testament to which our Lord and His Apostles made their constant appeal, we shall keep steadily before our minds the fact that, in the estimation of a prophet like Jeremiah, the sin of sins, the sin that involved the ruin of Israel and Judah, was the sin of associating other objects of worship with the One Only God. The temptation is peculiarly strong to some natures. The continual relapse of ancient Israel is not so great a wonder to those of us who have any knowledge of mankind, and who can observe what is passing around them at the present day. It is the severe demand of God’s holy law, which makes men cast about for some plausible compromise-it is that demand which also makes them yearn after some intermediary power, whose compassion will be less subject to considerations of justice, whom prayers and entreaties and presents may overcome, and induce to wink at unrepented sin. In an age of unsettlement, the more daring spirits will be prone to silence their inconvenient scruples by rushing into atheism, while the more timid may take refuge in Popery. "For to disown a Moral Governour, or to admit that any observances of superstition can release men from the duty of obeying Him, equally serves the purpose of those, who resolve to be as wicked as they dare, or as little virtuous as they can" (Bp. Hurd).

13

Then too there is the glory of the saints and angels of God. How can frail man refuse to bow before the vision of their power and splendour, as they stand, the royal children of the King of kings, around the heavenly throne, deathless, radiant with love and joy and purity, exalted far above all human weakness and human sorrows? If the holy angels are "ministering spirits," why not the entire community of the Blessed? And what is to hinder us from casting ourselves at the feet of saint or angel, one’s own appointed guardian, or chosen helper? Let good George Herbert answer for us all.Oh glorious spirits, who after all your bandsSee the smooth face of God, without a frown,Or strict commandsWhere every one is king, and hath his crown,If not upon his head, yet in his hands:Not out of envy or maliciousnessDo I forbear to crave your special aid.I would addressMy vows to thee most gladly, blessed Maid,And Mother of my God, in my distress:But now, (alas!) I dare not; for our King,Whom we do all jointly adore and praise,Bids no such thing:And where His pleasure no injunction lays,(‘Tis your own case) ye never move a wing."All worship is prerogative, and a flowerOf His rich crown, from whom lies no appealAt the last hour:

14

Therefore we dare not from His garland steal,To make a posy for inferior power."In this sense also, as in many others, the warning of St. John applies:LITTLE CHILDREN, KEEP YOURSELVES FROM IDOLS!PARKER, " Dramatised TruthJeremiah 19"Thus saith the Lord, Go and get a potter"s earthen bottle" ( Jeremiah 19:1). We do not like dramatised truth, and therefore there are large portions of the Bible which we do not admire. We admire those portions sentimentally, but not practically; we look upon them as upon pictures of long ago, never intended for reproduction or imitation. Were a man to dramatise the truth now, he would be reported as an eccentricity. Jesus Christ dramatised it in parables; Jeremiah and Ezekiel dramatised it in various ways: we like this dramatisation to be confined to the Bible, as we like the Commandments also to be confined to the same limit; we never like to see any of them loose, and doing active work in the Church. In this way we allow the Bible to become old, an archaic treasure, a very valuable curiosity. We have seen in the previous chapter what the potter could do with the vessel. Let us make no mistake about that vessel, for it was then in wet clay, and so long as a vessel is in wet clay the potter can do with it what he pleases; but once let it pass the oven, and there is no potter on earth can do anything with it. It is most desirable and essential that we should have right ideas about the potter and the clay, for that image, by being mistaken in its purpose and scope, has wrought infinite mischief in the Church. There is a point up to which the potter can do what he pleases with the clay: he can make the vessel high or low, broad or narrow, shapely or ungainly; he can play with the wet clay. There was a time when the Lord could do this with man; when he took the dust out of the ground and shaped it, and prepared it for the reception of inspiration, he could have broken it, or Revelation -shaped it, or done what he liked with it, but not after he had breathed into man the breath of life, and man became a living soul. Reverently, then, God conditioned and limited himself. The Lord cannot convert the world without the world"s consent. In Almightiness the Lord still reigneth in the fulness of his power. He can make the nations, and put them down; but what can he do with a little child"s heart when that heart is set in deadly animosity against him? He could break the child upon the wheel, but breakage is not conversion, destruction is not reconciliation. How does he propose to proceed in this matter of bringing the world to himself? We find the answer in the music of the New Testament. What is there? Any hint of omnipotence? Not one. What is the tone of the New Testament? Reasoning, entreaty, persuasion. In it there is a Man who shall tell good news and ask men to believe it; and he must put upon all the eloquence this terrible climax, yet this climax full of gracious-ness—"He that believeth shall be saved: he that believeth not shall be damned." Everything

15

depends, then, upon the state in which the potter"s vessel is found. Once let it be hardened by fire, and the potter can do nothing with it, but save it, use it, or break it; it has passed out of his hands. There is a sense in which we pass out of the hands of the mere power of God. He can always destroy us. Omnipotence is always available for crushing; but in the matter of salvation there must be pleading, standing at the door and knocking, patient waiting, loving and tender appeal. Omnipotence must soften itself by its infinite lovingkindness, that the two may work together in zealous co-operation. A potter can only work with the clay whilst it is in a certain condition. We are not clay. When a man asks us in theological anger or impatience, Cannot the potter do what he likes with the clay? we answer, Yes, before it has gone through the oven, not after; and we answer, No, we are not clay, we are men, souls, thinkers, and it hath pleased God, with whom alone rests the thunder of Almightiness, so to make us that we can disobey him; otherwise we could not be men. We must take the risks of manhood with its advantages. Our dejection is great only because our exaltation is unequalled by any creatures known to ourselves. It is because we can blaspheme God that we can pray.Jeremiah is to take a potter"s earthen bottle for dramatic uses. He is to go forth, not personally, but officially: "Take of the ancients of the people, and of the ancients of the priests; and go forth." Cruelly have these prophets been used, as if they intended all the harsh expressions they used. They had nothing to do with them; they were errand-bearers; they were sent with messages of thunder, and all they had to do was to deliver them. They themselves trembled under the very burden they carried. This will remove a great deal of the difficulty felt in relation to what are known as imprecatory Psalm , objurgatory prophecies, cruel denunciations, and the like. The men were not scolds, furies, people who delighted in the use of violent language as a kind of rhetorical exercise; they were men who were charged with the judgments of God, and were bound to deliver them under pain of" death. Men are sent on hard errands. The men do not like the business they have to do oftentimes. We could be so popular, say they, if we could but say just what we pleased out of our own imagination; and then we should offend no one, we should enjoy the hospitality of nations; we should prophesy smooth things, and make the lives of men comfortable; we should take the sting out of the law, and all darkness we should blow away from the heavens, that they might shine in beautiful blueness and radiance; then we should be sent for, and patronised, and compensated, and honoured, and mayhap might sit sometimes with the king on his throne that we might whisper into his ear more tenderly and intently sweet lies. A prophet"s life was a hard one. What could it be to Isaiah , to Jeremiah , or to Ezekiel to talk this retributive thunder and lightning? Yet they could not be silent; the carriage was made for the gun, and the gun it must carry. The Lord has made men different. Some men could not read a prophecy aloud without taking out of it all that is distinctive of its intellectual energy and spiritual dignity. Such men would turn a denunciation into a kind of lying benediction. Others, again, could not read the Beatitudes as they ought to be read, with musical tremulousness, with tears, with infinite suggestiveness of tone, with sympathy that would not irritate a wound. Each man must operate according to his own gift and function. Here we come face to face

16

with the sovereign election of God, and we accept it as a gracious truth. One man is made of iron, and another of finest porcelain, and another hardly made at all—simply blown into a kind of trembling existence, more a figure, a wraith, a cloudy shape, than a solid personality. Each accepts his gift of God, and works accordingly, and thanks God for any measure of grace and power, and for any opportunity, how limited soever, of proclaiming the eternal kingdom of light and truth and grace.We need some such introduction as this to the tremendous sentence which Jeremiah pronounced when he went unto the valley of the son of Hinnom, which is by the entry of the east gate. He was there to recite a lesson: "proclaim there the words that I shall tell thee," at the moment. How he must have writhed under the torture! How his lips must have been made again to speak this molten lava! How he must have lost consciousness in a certain way for a time, and have become a mere instrument or medium for the using of Almighty God! Man never conceived these supreme judgments; they bear an impress other than human. What an awful cataract of judgment—what complaining of neglect and forsakenness—what an exhibition of treachery, blasphemy, self-idolatry, and all shame! And what resources of retaliation—what mockery—what taunting! Thus: "And I will make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place,"—a word in the Hebrew which corresponds to the sound of gurgling. "I will make void:" I will pour out as men pour water out of a bottle, and it gurgles its way out into the ditch; so I will make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem. A kind of subtle laughter as of mockery, a ghostly taunting, runs through this declaration. "Their carcases will I give to be meat for the fowls of the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth:" I will spread a banquet for birds and beasts of prey. "And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege and straitness." Jeremiah never invented these words; as a human invention they would be wholly out of proportion to the thing spoken about. Man can never take such a view of sin as can justify such judgments on a merely human scale. It is not in man"s moral nature to see sin in its sinfulness, except in a very limited and suggestive degree. Only he who can see sin as it is—black, infamous—can fit the judgment to it. Therefore, in the judgment of God let us read the divine estimate of wrong being and wrong doing. Yet we feel that history without this spirit of judgment would be intolerable. Imagine human history rolling forth in ever-increasing volume without the spirit cf judgment having its days of criticism and audit and doom! The spirit of judgment has made the centuries what they are. But for the action of that spirit how the black river would have increased, and overflowed all the green fields and blooming gardens, and turned the whole earth into a black sea! But now and again the spirit of judgment has come down, set up a great white throne, sat upon it, and meted out penalty, and given fear its place in the ministry of Providence, and has thus held in limitation that which would have inundated and overwhelmed the whole green earth. Let us be thankful for death; let us bless God for plague and pestilence: they are the servants of the Almighty. Even when they come to avenge neglect of law, they do not divest themselves of religious suggestion. There have been men who have laughed almost atheistically because they have traced plague and pestilence to the neglect of sanitary law. But who made

17

sanitary law? Whose law is it? Why was not nature so made that we could do just as we pleased? Is not man greater than any sanitary law? The answer Isaiah , No; sanitary law is a law of heaven as well as a law of earth, and plague and pestilence are the black wolves which God keeps to bite men who sin against sanitary law. We do not by merely using secular or scientific terms do away with the central and abiding principle of a religious judgment and a religious penalty.What then happened? Jeremiah , having thus denounced the judgment of the Lord, took up the bottle and broke it in the sight of the men that went with him. Then he was to say: "Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaketh a potter"s vessel, that cannot be made whole again." Sometimes we need graphic displays of God"s meaning. We cannot understand abstract reasoning, we are lost in spiritual metaphysics; sometimes, therefore, God has to employ means for writing the lesson in very graphic letters before our eyes, and he must say as bottle and vessel are broken in the sight of the people—"Thus!" Why have we not ears to hear the noises which are made thus in penal providence? Why do we not exercise our eyes and behold how many bottles are broken upon the floor of history, that men may be taught how God will act in certain moral crises? We call such exhibitions dramatic, theatrical, eccentric; still the prophets go forth and declare God"s truth in God"s way: long, elaborate, minute, critical, eloquent appeals and denunciations would have been lost, but the shivered bottle taught the observing people what God meant to do with them; they would be as a little bottle in his hand, as a thing that could be broken to pieces at their very feet. The Lord resorts to all manner of exhibition and illustration and appeal, if haply he may save some. This is the reason why he dashed your fortune to pieces. You remember when the sum was large, and you said you would die in your nest, how he took you up the bottle and broke it at your feet, and you started, and wondered as to what was coming next. It was thus that God broke the bottle of your little child"s life; he saw that this was the only way in which your attention could be excited, for you were becoming imbruted and carnalised; you were losing all spiritual life and dignity and value, and were rapidly amalgamating yourself with the dust; therefore, he had to send infinite trouble before your eyes could be opened in wakeful and profitable attention. Thus the Lord is defeating crafty politicians, and selfish statesmen, and ambitious kings, and families that are bent on their ruin through their dignity: and thus, and thus, by a thousand breakages, God is asking man to think, ere it be too late.Throughout this condemnation there is a spirit of justice. We never have mere vengeance in the providence of God, any more than we have mere power in the miracles of Christ. The miracles of judgment and the miracles of providence are all explained by a moral impulse or purpose. The Lord condescends to use the explanatory word, "Because." Thus we read: "Because they have forsaken me." A wondrous word, of frequent occurrence in the sacred books, is this word "forsaken." God feels it when we do not keep near him; he misses us; he cannot bear to be forsaken. Has he a heart? Has he sensitiveness in regard to creatures short-lived upon the earth, as ephemera are short-lived in the sunbeam? Can he not

18

make more men to keep him company? Are we of consequence to him? Why this divine wail because God has been left, neglected, forsaken? This is not the complaint of mere fastidiousness; this is the revelation of the divine nature. He condescends to cry that we may understand that he has a heart; he is willing to send upon the earth a shower of tears that we may know how capable he is of being grieved. There Isaiah , then, a spirit of justice in the whole condemnation. Verily, there is a reason or an explanation of all the judgment that falls upon our life. Why was the one; ewe lamb taken? Because we had forsaken God. Why was our house ruined by the storm? Because we had estranged the sanctuary. Why was the whole business turned back upon us in disappointment and confusion? Because we had burned incense unto other gods. Why this long continuance of cloud, and frown, and difficulty, and humiliation? Dost thou ask, thou masked pretender? Dost thou ask in the tone of injury? Put thine hand within thy breast, now draw it out, and it is white with leprosy; put it back, it is more leprous still: the answer is within thee—the heart is set against God. It will be always difficult to make amiable persons understand this, because they have not strength enough to go many a mile in the devil"s road; it is impossible, therefore, for them to believe that the devil"s road is so long, and that other men can take a journey into a far country and there waste their substance with riotous living. You can account for your poisoned blood if you like. Do not make a mystery when you can solve the riddle. Do not ask men to pray with you until you have damned yourself. Why should we waste our prayers upon men who have covered up their iniquity, and then wanted us to plant the flowers of piety in the black soil? There is a reason behind all this; probably we cannot always understand that reason, because all judgment does not fall because there has been sin; sometimes judgment is sent to try men, that they may be baffled and disappointed and humbled; sometimes God says, I will inflict a loss upon Job in order that he may pray with tenderer pathos and larger scope of language and desire; I will teach the patriarch how to pray; at last I will make him pray for the very friends whom he has been contradicting all this time. Sometimes he makes us poor that he may make us rich. Every Prayer of Manasseh , therefore, must judge the case for himself; the one anxiety of the teacher should be that no man should lay flattering unction to his soul when he has no right to it; and on the other hand, the true teacher should see that no man is cast down of sorrow overmuch when he cannot trace the sin which accounts for the judgment; in that instant it may be that God is trying and testing and training, and all the while is looking over the furnace and watching until he can catch sight of his own image, then he will deliver and glorify those who have been purged and tested. This is a double question. The face on each side must be studied, and no man must pronounce for another, but let each be faithful to himself, or he never can receive explanation, condolence, or true sustenance. What looks like severity is really profoundly beneficent. This we have tested in many an instance. Man cannot always pronounce upon his trouble on the day of its occurrence; he needs the help of distance. Let a man look upon the first grave he ever dug a quarter of a century after he made that pit in the black ground. How awful it was on that day of digging! How near despair the man was when he took his first journey into the cemetery! But time came and wrought its wizardry in explanation and soothing sympathy; the horizon enlarged; events occurred which

19

without being ostentatious were expository; things fell into their places; out of chaos came order, out of tumult came music, out of darkness came light; and now the way to the cemetery is almost a flowery way; there are joys to be had there not to be found otherwhere—not shouting, exulting joys, but those tender gladnesses which are charged with a deeper pathos because of the melancholy which throws upon them a hue as of heaven"s own light. Experience alone can understand this. Such conclusions cannot be rushed to and violently forced; they must come as the result of a long educational process. We see here, however, the place of the prophet in society; he is a moral teacher, he speaks great spiritual truths; he is not an expositor of science and art, he is an expositor of the ways of God to men.Jeremiah having delivered his message, what became of it all? "Pashur the son of Immer the priest, who was also chief governor in the house of the Lord, heard that Jeremiah prophesied these things. Then Pashur smote Jeremiah the prophet" ( Jeremiah 20:1-2). The word "smote" is grammatically peculiar. Within the grammar of it is held the meaning that the blow was struck with the priest"s own hand. It was not a stroke delivered by another. So excited did Pashur the son of Immer the priest become, that he lifted up his hand and smote the prophet who had thus denounced the sin of the nation. Did Jeremiah retire dismayed? We find the answer from Jeremiah 20:3 to Jeremiah 20:6. Jeremiah was not overborne by this blow from the priest"s hand; he said, "The Lord hath not called thy name Pashur, but Magor-missabib:" there shall no longer be joy round about, but fear round about; and the worst kind of fear, "for thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will make thee a terror to thyself." It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God! Prophets must not accept a flesh wound as a period to their function, as an exhaustion of their prerogative; while the poor flesh smarts under the stinging blow the soul must rise to the occasion, and the smiter himself must be struck with. a deadlier hand than his own. Thus the prophet has a bad time: of it in the world. We pray that a prophet may arise. Yet who dare say Amen? He would have a hard time of it! We need him much. The Lord hath forsaken me utterly if at this moment the Church does not in all her departments and communions need a prophet, a terrible Prayer of Manasseh , a man of iron lips, a man of throat of brass, a man too strong for patronage, yet weak in the presence of all tenderness, necessity, and helplessness. Let him come, O living God, with his potter"s earthen vessel, and break it before us. Yet how dare we ask thee to send that man? We should ill-use him. Yet we need him very much.PETT, " The Lesson Of The Potter’s Vessel (Jeremiah 19:1-15).Jeremiah was now called on to perform a prophetic ritual through which he would vividly depict what was to happen to Judah and Jerusalem. This too was in terms of a potter. He was to buy a potter’s earthenware vessel (the word baqbuq indicates a jar with a long narrow neck and the Hebrew word is intended to sound like the gurgling of liquid as it leaves such a jar. In order to bring this out we could translate a ‘gurgle jar’) and in the presence of the elders of Judah, both priestly and lay, he was then to hurl it into the Valley of Hinnom where it would smash to pieces. The

20

vessel represented Israel/Judah, bought by YHWH for a price when He redeemed them from Egypt, and the smashing indicated what YHWH was about to do to them, partly because of their antics in the Valley of Hinnom. He was about to hurl them away from Him and smash them in pieces.Jeremiah 19:1-2‘Thus said YHWH, “Go, and buy a potter’s earthen bottle, and take of the elders of the people, and of the elders of the priests, and go forth to the valley of the son of Hinnom, which is by the entry of the gate Harsith, and proclaim there the words that I shall tell you.”We have already seen in Jeremiah 18:1-4 that the potter’s workmanship represented ‘the house of Israel’, and so the purchase of the long necked, earthen ‘gurgle-jar’ (baqbuq) represented YHWH’s ‘purchase’ of Israel/Judah out of the land of Egypt (Exodus 20:2). But unlike the other, this jar was hardened in its shape and could no longer be ‘made again’. It was what it was. Thus if judged as unsatisfactory all that remained was to smash it. It was beyond reforming. The particular reason for it being termed a ‘gurgle-jar’ is brought out in Jeremiah 19:7 where YHWH was to ‘gurgle out’ (baqaq) the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem into the Valley of Hinnom.Jeremiah was then to call on the elders of the people (their authoritative tribal leaders) and the elders of the priests (elsewhere called ‘the chiefs of the priests’ (2 Chronicles 36:14) or the ‘heads of the priests’ (Nehemiah 12:7)) and take them with him to the gate that led out of the city into the Valley of Hinnom. The fact that they were willing to go with him, even though they despised him, was an indication of the awe in which he was held, and the effectiveness of his presence. They were presumably aware of his previous enactments (e.g. Jeremiah 13:1-7) and no doubt wanted to know what he intended to do next, especially if it related to the Valley of Hinnom which had a certain reputation. The verb ‘take’ is not in the Hebrew and we are probably intended to carry forward the ‘go’ so as to embrace these elders (i.e. ‘go with --’). But the idea is right.The Valley of the sons of Hinnom was well known both as a rubbish dump and as a centre of Molech worship in which human sacrifices were offered (Jeremiah 7:31). The Gate Harsith may well mean ‘the Sherd Gate’ This may have been either the Fountain Gate or the Dung Gate (see Nehemiah 3:13-15), or it may have been a small postern gate through which broken pottery (sherds) was cast into the Valley. And once Jeremiah had gathered the elders at the Sherd Gate he was to proclaim to them YHWH’s words prior to his visual display with the ‘gurgle-jar’.

21

2 and go out to the Valley of Ben Hinnom, near the entrance of the Potsherd Gate. There proclaim the words I tell you,

BARNES, "The valley ... - See Jer_7:31 note.The east gate - Others render “the pottery gate.” Two gates led into the valley of Hinnom, the Fountain-gate at the southeast corner, and the Dung-gate on the southwest side of Zion; some think that “the east gate” was neither of these, but a small or postern gate, used for throwing out rubbish, the valley having been put to this degrading use from the time that Josiah defiled it 2Ki_23:10. And thus the mean symbol of a proud nation was carried out through a back door to be broken upon the heaps of refuse already cast there.

GILL, "And go forth into the valley of the son of Hinnom,.... To whom it formerly belonged, and so it was called as early as Joshua's time, Jos_15:8; from the faith and abomination of the place, and the shocking torments here exercised, "hell", from hence, in the New Testament, is called "Gehenna": here the prophet with the elders were to go, for reasons after mentioned; because here their cruel idolatries were committed, and Jerusalem was to be made like unto it for pollution and bloodshed: which is by the entry of the east gate; the way to it out of Jerusalem lay through the east gate of the city. The Targum calls it "the dung gate"; through which the filth of the city was carried out, and laid near it, and where lay the potter's sherds; hence some render it the "potsherd" gate (m); or rather it should be the potter's gate; for that reason, because the potter's field and house lay near it, from whence the prophet had his earthen bottle; others call it the "sun gate" (n), because it lay to the sun rising; but seeing the valley of Hinnom was to the south of Jerusalem, this seems rather to be the south gate; and a proper situation this was for the potters to dry and harden their pots. The Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic versions, leave it untranslated, and call it the gate Harsith or Hadsith: and proclaim there the words that I shall tell thee; for as yet it was not made known to him what he should do with his bottle, or say to the elders, until he came to the place he was ordered to.

HENRY, " He must go to the valley of the son of Hinnom, and deliver this message there; for the word of the Lord is not bound to any one place; as good a sermon may be preached in the valley of Tophet as in the gate of the temple. Christ preached on a mountain and out of a ship. This valley lay partly on the south side of Jerusalem, but the prophet's way to it was by the entry on the east gate - the sun gate (Jer_19:2), so some render it, and suppose it to look not towards the sun-rising, but the noon sun - the potter's gate, so some. This sermon must be preached in that place, in the valley of the

22

son of Hinnom, 1. Because there they had been guilty of the vilest of their idolatries, the sacrificing of their children to Moloch, a horrid piece of impiety, which the sight of the place might serve to remind them of and upbraid them with. 2. Because there they should feel the sorest of their calamities; there the greatest slaughter should be made among them; and, it being the common sink of the city, let them look upon it and see what a miserable spectacle this magnificent city would be when it should be all like the valley of Tophet. God bids him go thither, and proclaim there the words that I shall tell thee, when thou comest thither; whereby it appears (as Mr. Gataker well observed) that God's messages were frequently not revealed to the prophets before the very instant of time wherein they were to deliver them.JAMISON, "valley of the son of Hinnom — or Tophet, south of Jerusalem, where

human victims were offered, and children made to pass through the fire, in honor of Molech.east gate — Margin, “sun gate,” sunrise being in the east. Maurer translates, the “potter’s gate.” Through it lay the road to the valley of Hinnom (Jos_15:8). The potters there formed vessels for the use of the temple, which was close by (compare Jer_19:10, Jer_19:14; Jer_18:2; Zec_11:13). The same as “the water gate toward the east” (Neh_3:26; Neh_12:37); so called from the brook Kedron. Calvin translates, as English Version and Margin. “It was monstrous perversity to tread the law under foot in so conspicuous a place, over which the sun daily rising reminded them of the light of God’s law.”

CALVIN, "And he adds, Enter into the valley of the son of Hinnom, which is at the entrance of the east gate, rendered by some “of the earthen gate,” for which I see no reason; but I leave this to be examined by those who are more versed in the language. It is indeed thought that ש, shin, is changed here into ס, samech; but if we take the word as it is, it means “solar,” for חרס cheras, from which חרסית cherasit, is derived, signifies the sun; and it seems to have been called the solar gate by way of excellency, because it looked toward the rising sun. (212) I do not yet oppose the idea of those who think that the Prophet alludes to חרש, cheresh, of which he had spoken, and that he calls it the east gate, though it was as it were an earthen gate; for the two letters ש, shin, and ס samech, as it is well known, are closely allied. Cry there, he says, the words which I shall speak to thee.I come now to the subject: God bids his Prophet to get from the potter an earthen vessel, and to do so in the presence of the elders; for it was necessary to have witnesses in a matter so important; and as the public safety of the people was concerned, it was God’s purpose, lest the prophecy should be despised, that there should be present the gravest witnesses, suitable, and, as they say, authorized, or approved; and he calls them the elders of the people and of the priests; and no doubt they were chosen from a great number, even from among the priests who were chief. There were also Levites of the sons of Aaron; but there were then chief priests a large number; but, as they say, it was a turbulent rabble. They were chosen from those first orders who ruled the Church, and Jeremiah calls them the elders of the priests. There were also others chosen from the people who presided over the

23

Church. And we know that there were two public functionaries, or, as they say, a twofold government: the priests were the rulers of the Church with regard to the law, so that their government was spiritual; there were also the elders of the people who managed civil affairs; but there were some things in which they ruled in common. We now then see what the Prophet meant by saying that he was bidden to call witnesses to see what is afterwards stated, and that they were taken partly from the priests and partly from the people.He says; Enter into the valley of the son of Hinnom. This valley was in the suburbs, and was called תפת Tophet, as we shall hereafter see. It is thought that this name is derived from drums, because they did beat drums when infants were killed, lest their cry should excite any feeling of humanity. But, we shall again say something on the etymology of this word. In this valley they were accustomed to sacrifice and offer their children by casting them into the fire. Many indeed performed this in a different way, by purifying their children and carrying them round the fire, so that they felt only the flame and escaped unhurt. But there were those who wished to shew their zeal above others, whose ambition drove them farther, and they killed their children and then burnt them. But of this matter I have spoken elsewhere, and I shall now only briefly notice it. This opinion is not, what is commonly received; but it seems to me that it may be gathered from many parts of Scripture, that many killed their children, and that some only purified them. However this may have been, God justly abominated the sacrifice; for his will was that sacrifices should be offered only in one place. When any one offered a calf or a lamb in any other place than at Jerusalem, it was a spurious sacrifice; and the Jews ought to have followed what God had prescribed, and not to have done anything presumptuously, for obedience is ever better than any sacrifices.But here there was a double crime; they left the Temple and sought to obtrude on God sacrifices against his expressed will; and then there was another crime still more atrocious, for they devoted their children to Baalim or to Baal, and not to the only true God. (I pass by now their slaughter and burning.) This then was the reason why the Prophet was commanded to go to this place. How detestable that service was to God appears dear from this, that the prophets give the name of hell to the valley of Hinnom, גיא הנם gia-enom. And we know that at the time of Christ it was the common name for hell; and whenever Christ speaks of Gehenna, he uses the word according to its common acceptation at that time. The word has indeed been corrupted by the Greeks, for it is properly גיא הנם gia-enom. But what does the word mean in the gospel? Hell itself; and whence was its origin? We indeed know how great and how incurable was the madness of those who gave themselves up to their own superstitions; for though the prophets strongly condemned the place, yet the people proceeded in their usual idolatry; it was therefore necessary to give the place a disgraceful name in order to render it more abominable.It is now added, that the place was by the entrance of the east gate. As it was especially a celebrated gate, and as the sun, rising there, reminded them to behold the light which God had kindled for them in his law, it was a monstrous stupidity

24

proudly to tread, as it were, under foot. the law of God in so renowned a place, and to profane his worship, as though they openly wished to shew that they esteemed as nothing what God had commanded. If any still think that there is an allusion to the word חרש cheresh, before used, I offer no opposition; that is, though this gate was indeed oriental, it was yet as it were an earthen gate.He says, Cry there, or, proclaim with a clear voice, the words which I shall speak to thee. The Prophet no doubt said this expressly, in order to add more weight to his prophecy. He indeed did nothing but by God’s command; but as his authority was not acknowledged by the Jews, he here testifies for their sakes that he would say nothing but what God himself would command. This preface then confirmed the authority of his prophecy, so that the Jews might not reject what he might say, as though it came from Jeremiah himself.But a general doctrine may be hence gathered, — that ministers are to bring forward nothing but what they have learnt from God himself. For though Jeremiah was a great man and endued with excellent gifts, yet he was not to bring one word or a syllable as from himself: how great then must be the presumption of those who seek to be superior to him by bringing their inventions, and at the same time demand to be deemed oracles? This passage confirms the doctrine of Peter, who says,“He who speaks, let him speak the words of God.”(1 Peter 4:11)Parkhurst, however, takes the word as it is in the text, and gives this version, “the gate of the burnings,” so called because of the practice of burning children in the valley opposite the gate. See Jeremiah 7:31. All these names would properly designate the south gate. — Ed. COKE, "Jeremiah 19:2. By the entry of the east gate— According to others, The entry of the potter's gate; which seems to be the best reading, as it denotes that gate, through which the potters who made the vessels for the use of the temple, in its neighbourhood, carried out the fragments of their broken vessels. The context, Jeremiah 19:10; Jeremiah 19:14. Jeremiah 18:2 and Zechariah 11:13 confirm this conjecture; besides which, we may add, that the valley of Hinnom and the brook Cedron were near the temple; that the potters lived, within that gate which led thither, and that they carried their rubbish out of that gate. See Grotius, and Houbigant. TRAPP, "Jeremiah 19:2 And go forth unto the valley of the son of Hinnom, which [is] by the entry of the east gate, and proclaim there the words that I shall tell thee,Ver. 2. And go forth unto the valley of the son of Hinnom.] See Jeremiah 7:3, that where the Jews had sinned, there they might be sentenced.

25

Which is by the entry of the east gate.] Or, as others render it, Portam fictilem seu testaceam, the gate of clay or brick, the potters’ gate (because the potters dwelt near to it, and thereby carried forth their potsherds), called also the dung gate, saith the Chaldee paraphrase; an allusion being hereby made both to the pot he carried and to the pieces of it when broken, which should be cast to the dunghill. Inde ad gehennam via erat. This was the way to Tophet, and thither Jeremiah led them, said an expositor, that (a) considering their graves in that valley, according to Jeremiah 7:32, and that their bodies, those earthen vessels, should soon after be broken and carried out as dung into Tophet by the Chaldeans, and their souls into hell by the devils, they might repent, and so prevent such a mischief.And proclaim there the words that I shall tell thee.] God took his own times to tell his prophets what they should tell the people. The privilege of infallibility, saith a divine, was perpetual to the apostles: Prophetis vero saepius intervallatum, et fere non extra ipsos prophetandi paroxysmos durans; not so to the prophets, but while they were prophesying only for the most part; neither knew they many times what they should prophesy, till the very instant.

3 and say, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, you kings of Judah and people of Jerusalem. This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Listen! I am going to bring a disaster on this place that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle.

BARNES, "Kings - Plural because the message Jer_19:3-9, related not especially to the reigning king, but to the whole royal house.GILL, "And say, hear ye the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah,.... The king and his queen; or the king and his sons; or the king and his princes, and nobles; for there was but one king reigning at a time in Judah, and the present king was Zedekiah; see Jer_21:1; and inhabitants of Jerusalem; the elders of which, and of the priests, were now

26

before him; to whom he said the following things, that they might tell them to the persons mentioned: thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; who is able to do whatsoever he pleases in the armies of the heavens, and among the inhabitants of the earth, and will do so among his own people, notwithstanding his being the God of Israel: behold, I will bring evil upon this place; the evil of punishment for the evil of sin; such as the sword, famine, and captivity; meaning not on that spot of ground where the prophet with the elders were, but upon the city of Jerusalem, and on all the land of Judea: the which whosoever heareth, his ears shall tingle; it shall be astonishing and surprising to him; it shall even stun him; he shall stand as one thunderstruck or be so affected with it as a man is at a violent clap of thunder, or at some exceeding vehement sound, which leaves such an impression upon him, and continues with him, that he cannot get rid of it; but seems to be continually sounding in his ears, and they even echo and ring with it; see 1Sa_3:11. The phrase denotes the greatness of the calamity, and the surprise which the bare report of it would bring with it.

HENRY, "He must give general notice of a general ruin now shortly coming upon Judah and Jerusalem, Jer_19:3. He must, as those that make proclamation, begin with an Oyes: Hear you the word of the Lord, though it be a terrible word, for you may thank yourselves if it be so. Both rulers and ruled must attend to it, at their peril; the kings of Judah, the king and his sons, the king and his princes and privy-counsellors, must hear the word of the King of kings, for, high as they are, he is above them. The inhabitants of Jerusalem also must hear what God has to say to them. Both princes and people have contributed to the national guilt and must concur in the national repentance, or they will both share in the national ruin. Let them all know that the Lord of hosts, who is therefore able to do what he threatens, though he is the God of Israel, nay, because he is so, will therefore punish them in the first place for their iniquities (Amo_3:2): He will bring evil upon this place (upon Judah and Jerusalem) so surprising, and so dreadful, that whosoever hears it, his ears shall tingle; whosoever hears the prediction of it, hears the report and representation of it, it shall make such an impression of terror upon him that he shall still think he hears it sounding in his ears and shall not be able to get it out of his mind. The ruin of Eli's house is thus described (1Sa_3:11), and of Jerusalem, 2Ki_21:12.

JAMISON, "The scene of their guilt is chosen as the scene of the denunciation against them.

kings — the king and queen (Jer_13:18); or including the king’s counselors and governors under him.tingle — as if struck by a thunder peal (1Sa_3:11; 2Ki_21:12).

CALVIN, "He now adds, Hear ye the word of Jehovah. This is a confirmation of the former sentence. We hence see why it was said, Cry, or, with a clear voice proclaim, what I shall say to thee; it was, that they might know that he spake not according to his own ideas as a man, but that he was a celestial herald to proclaim what God

27

commanded. Hear, he says, ye kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. We see how the Prophet did not spare even kings, according to what God had before commanded him, that he should act boldly and shew no respect of persons, (Jeremiah 1:8.) He then faithfully performed his office, as he did not flatter kings, and was not terrified by their dignity and power. But he addressed them first, and then the people, because they who had most grievously sinned, were made rightly to bear the first reproof. We hence see what the next passage means,“Reprove mountains and chide hills,” (Micah 6:1)and also this passage,“I have set thee over nations and kingdoms,”(Jeremiah 1:10)for heavenly truth ought to bring under subjection, as Paul says, everything high in the world, so that all the pride of man may be subdued. (2 Corinthians 10:5.) Kings indeed do very ill bear to be thus boldly treated; for they wish to be exempt from every law and to be free from every yoke. But if they now acknowledge not their subjection to God’s word, they must at last come before his tribunal; and then they shall find how perversely they have abused their power. As to teachers, they ought, small and great, to teach after the example of Jeremiah; they ought to reprove and to rebuke, when necessary, without shewing any respect of persons.Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, and the God of Israel, Behold, I am bringing an evil on this place, of which whosoever shall hear, tingle shall his ears. The prophetic word had more power when the Jews were brought to the very place where the event was exhibited, he might have said the same thing in the Temple or in the gate or in the palace of the king but his prophecy would not have been so effectual. We indeed know how much tardiness there is in men in general; but so great was then the obstinacy of the Jews, that however forcibly the truth might have been set forth, yet it was received with so much indifference, that it was neglected. God then intended to shew to them, as it were, the event itself. He says, Jehovah of hosts and the God of Israel; and he used these words, that they might know, as we have stated elsewhere, that they had to do with God, whose power is dreaded even by angels. And in order to shake off their foolish boasting, that they were the children of Abraham, —“God,” he says, “has sufficient power to chastise you, and the same is the God of Israel, whose name ye falsely and absurdly pretend to profess.” These subjects I only in a brief manner handle, because I have explained them more fully elsewhere.He says that such a calamity was nigh that place as would make the ears to tingle: when there is a violent noise, our ears are stunned, and there is at the same time a certain tingling or ringing. When a man is killed, or when ten or twelve men are slain, there is a dreadful cry; but in a great tumult occasioned by men perishing, such is the noise that it stuns in a manner the ears, like that which proceeds from cataracts; for the violent noise of the Nile, they say, causes some degree of deafness.

28

So also the Prophet says here, I am bringing, says God, a calamity on this place, which shall not only terrify those who will hear of it, but also render them quite astonished, so that their ears shall tingle, as is the case when there is a violent and dreadful noise. The cause follows — COFFMAN, "Verse 3"And say, Hear ye the word of Jehovah, O kings of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, which whosoever heareth, his ears shall tingle. Because they have forsaken me, and have estranged this place, and have burned incense in it unto other gods, that they knew not, they and their fathers and the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocents, and have built the high places of Baal, to burn their sons in the fire for burnt-offerings unto Baal; which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind.""His ears shall tingle ..." (Jeremiah 19:3). This suggests such a shock as comes from a clap of thunder so close that the hearer's head rings and his ears tingle. The forthcoming destruction of Israel will be the kind of judgment that will get the full attention of the most indifferent."Ye have estranged this place ..." (Jeremiah 19:4). This means that the sins of the people had completely alienated Jerusalem from God's approval. They had destroyed the very charter of their existence as a nation."Ye have filled this place with the blood of innocents ..." (Jeremiah 19:4). This does not refer to the sacrifice of infants to Molech, but to the senseless murder of innocent people by Manasseh (2 Kings 21:16). "The sacrifice of children to Molech constitutes a new indictment, which comes in the next verse."[11]"Ye have built the high places of Baal ..." (Jeremiah 19:5). The purpose of those high places was stated in the next clause, "to burn their sons in the fire as burnt-offerings to Baal"; and that identifies the particular Baal here as the horrible Molech.Keil enumerated the sins of Israel here as follows: "(1) their public practice of idolatry; (2) judicial murder of the innocents; and (3) burning their own children as sacrifices to Molech."[12]"Hear ye ... O kings of Judah ..." (Jeremiah 19:3). "The message was not merely to the reigning king, but to the whole dynasty responsible for the apostasy of Israel."[13]"These verses are said to be strongly Deuteronomic in style and phraseology; but the whole argument turns on the identification of this Deuteronomic style and phraseology."[14] Amen! Amen! If they mean that Jeremiah was here quoting the

29

true author of Deuteronomy, namely, Moses, very well, we agree with that; but if it is meant that some mythical "Deuteronomic editor" is meant, we reject that false notion altogether."Which I commanded not ..." (Jeremiah 19:5). This establishes a principle that any alleged worship which God did not command is an abomination to the Lord. May we point out some other things that God has not commanded in Christian worship: the playing of instruments of music, communion under one kind, the burning of sacred incense, the sprinkling of holy water, the lighting of blessed candles, etc., etc. Nothing is any more dangerous than the worship of God through the observance of forms and actions that God has not commanded.TRAPP, "Jeremiah 19:3 And say, Hear ye the word of the LORD, O kings of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem; Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, the which whosoever heareth, his ears shall tingle.Ver. 3. Hear the word of the Lord, ye kings of Judah,] i.e., O king and thy counsellors, who are so many little kings, as King James was wont to say of the parliament men.Behold, I bring evil upon this place.] This he spake to all, and with all authority; catholicam et miserabilem perniciem proclamans. It is credible that he spake it with as good a courage (or better), as Bishop Ridley, martyr, did those comminatory words of his to Queen Mary and her servants, when they refused to hear him preach. He uttered them with such vehemence, saith mine author, that some of the hearers afterwards confessed the hairs to stand upright on their heads. (a)His ears shall tingle.] For grief and fear, as if he had been stonied with a thunder clap, or were ready to swoon. PETT. "Jeremiah 19:3“And say, Hear you the word of YHWH, O kings of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem, thus says YHWH of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I will bring evil on this place, which whoever hears, his ears will tingle.”He was to call on the elders (who were seen as representatives of the kings of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem) in YHWH’s Name as YHWH of Hosts, the God of Israel, and inform them that He was bringing on ‘this place’ such evil that it would make the ears of men ‘tingle’ just to hear of it. A similar expression was used in 1 Samuel 3:11 connected with a prophecy related to the destruction of the earlier Sanctuary at Shiloh, thus it contained within it a veiled warning of what was to happen to the Temple. (Compare also 2 Kings 21:12 for another use of the phrase). ‘This place’ strictly means the Valley of Hinnom/Topheth (see Jeremiah 19:6) but was intended also to include all Jerusalem (Jeremiah 19:7; Jeremiah 19:12-13).

30

4 For they have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned incense in it to gods that neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent.

BARNES, "Have estranged this place - They have not recognized the sanctity of this place, but have treated it as a strange place, by worshipping in it strange gods.

Innocents - i. e., guiltless persons.

CLARKE, "Estranged this place - Ye have devoted my temple to a widely different purpose from that for which it was erected.

GILL, "Because they have forsaken me,.... My worship, as the Targum; they had apostatized from God, relinquished his service, neglected and despised his word and ordinances, and left the religion they had been brought up in, and was agreeable to the will of God. This, with what follows, contain reasons of the Lord's threatening them to bring evil upon them, as before: and have estranged this place; or made a strange place of it, so that it could scarcely be known to be the same, nor would the Lord own it as his; meaning either the city of Jerusalem, to which the prophet was near, and could point to it; or the temple, which was in sight, and which they had strangely abused, by offering strange sacrifices to strange gods; or the valley of Hinnom, the spot he was upon, and which they had alienated from its original use: and have burnt incense in it unto other gods; to strange gods, the gods of the Gentiles; and this they did both in the city of Jerusalem and in the temple, and very probably in the valley of Hinnom, where they sacrificed their children: gods whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah; of whose wisdom, power, and goodness, neither they nor their fathers before them, nor any

31

of their kings, had had any instance; and whose help and assistance, in times of danger and difficulty, they had had no experience of; and, till now, neither they nor their ancestors had ever owned them, or acknowledged them; nor scarce had heard of their names; nor any of their pious kings, as David, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah: and have filled this place with the blood of innocents; young children that were sacrificed here to idols, as they were in the valley of Hinnom, which seems to be the place principally intended; so that they were not only guilty of idolatry, but of murder; and of the murder of innocent creatures, and even, of their own babes; which was shocking and unheard of cruelty!

HENRY 4-5, "He must plainly tell them what their sins were for which God had this controversy with them, Jer_19:4, Jer_19:5. They are charged with apostasy from God (They have forsaken me) and abuse of the privileges of the visible church, and which they had been dignified - They have estranged this place. Jerusalem (the holy city), the temple (the holy house), which was designed for the honour of God and the support of his kingdom among men, they had alienated from those purposes, and (as some render the word) they had strangely abused. They had so polluted both with their wickedness that God had disowned both, and abandoned them to ruin. He charges them with an affection for and the adoration of false gods, such as neither they nor their fathers have known, such as never had recommended themselves to their belief and esteem by any acts of power or goodness done for them or their ancestors, as that God had abundantly done whom they forsook; yet they took them at a venture for their gods; nay, being fond of change and novelty, they liked them the better for their being upstarts, and new fashions in religion were as grateful to their fancies as in other things. They also stand charged with murder, wilful murder, from malice prepense: They have filled this place with the blood of innocents. It was Manasseh's sin (2Ki_24:4), which the Lord would not pardon. Nay, as if idolatry and murder, committed separately, were not bad enough and affront enough to God and man, they have put them together, have consolidated them into one complicated crime, that of burning their children in the fire to Baal (Jer_19:5), which was the most insolent defiance to all the laws both of natural and revealed religion that ever mankind was guilty of; and by it they openly declared that they loved their new gods better than ever they loved the true God, though they were such cruel task-masters that they required human sacrifices (inhuman I should call them), which the Lord Jehovah, whose all lives and souls are, never demanded from his worshippers; he never spoke of such a thing, nor came it into his mind. See Jer_7:31.

JAMISON, "(Isa_65:11).estranged this place — devoted it to the worship of strange gods: alienating a portion of the sacred city from God, the rightful Lord of the temple, city, and whole land.nor their fathers — namely, the godly among them; their ungodly fathers God makes no account of.blood of innocents — slain in honor of Molech (Jer_7:31; Psa_106:37).

CALVIN, "The reason is given why God would so severely deal with that place. We indeed know that hypocrites are ever ready with their answer; as soon as God threatens them, they bark and bring forward their evasions. The Prophet then shews that the judgment announced would be just, lest the Jews should pretend that

32

it was extreme.God first complains that he had been forsaken by them, because they had changed the worship which had been prescribed in his Law. And this is what ought to be carefully considered; for no one would have willingly confessed what Jeremiah charged upon them all; they would have said, — “We have not forsaken God, for we are the children of Abraham; but what we wish to do is to add to his worship; and why should it be deemed a reproach to us, if we are not content with our own simple form of worship, and add various other forms? and we worship God not only in the Temple, but also in this place; and further, we do not spare our own children.” But God shews by one expression that these were frivolous evasions; for he is not acknowledged except what he orders and commands is obediently received. Let us know, that God is forsaken as soon as men turn aside from his pure word, and that all are apostates who turn here and there, and do not follow what God approves.Then he says that they had alienated the place. God had consecrated to himself the whole of Judea: he would not indeed have sacrifices offered to him in every place; but when the Jews worshipped him, as they were taught by Moses and the prophets, the whole land was as it were an altar and a temple to him. Then God complains that his authority in that part of the suburbs was taken away; as though he had said, — “The whole of Judea is my right and my jurisdiction, and Jerusalem is the royal palace in which I dwell; but ye, deluded beings, do by force take away my right and transfer it to another, as though one gave to a robber a place nigh a royal residence.” Thus God justly complains that they had alienated that place (213)But we must remember the reason, which immediately follows, because they had burned incense to Baal. They pretended, no doubt, the name of God; but yet it was a most preposterous superstition, when they worshipped inferior gods, as the Papists do at this day. The word Baal is sometimes used in the singular number by the prophets, and sometimes in the plural: but what is Baal? a patron. They were not content with one patron, but every one desired a patron for himself: hence under the words Baal and Baalim, the prophets characterized all fictition is modes of worship: when they worshipped God’s name, they blended the worship of patrons, who had not been made known to them; hence he adds, They have made incense in it to foreign gods. He afterwards says, that these foreign gods were such as neither they nor their fathers nor their kings knew. By saying that they were gods unknown to their fathers as well as to themselves and to their kings, he no doubt calls their attention to the doctrine of the law, and to the many certain proofs by which they had found that he was the only true God.The Jews might have raised such an objection as the Papists do at this day, — that their modes of worship were not devised in their time, but that they had derived them from their ancestors. But God regarded as nothing those kings and the fathers, who had long before degenerated from true and genuine religion. It must be here observed, that true knowledge is connected with verity: for they who had first contrived new forms of worship, doubtless followed their own foolish imaginations;

33

as when any one in the present day asks the Papists, why they weary themselves so much with their superstitions, good intention is ever their shield, — “O, we think that this is pleasing to God.” Therefore rightly does God here repudiate their inventions as wholly vain, for they possess nothing solid or permanent. At the same time, he by implication condemns the Jews for rejecting his law, whose authority had been established among them, so that they ought not to have entertained any doubt: for it would have been the greatest ingratitude to say, “We know not who introduced the Law!” God had indeed sanctioned the law by so many miracles, that it could not have been disputed; and they had also found by many evidences and proofs that he was the only brue God. tie had then been known by their fathers as well as by their kings, even by David and by all his godly successors. Hence their crime was exaggerated, by seeking for themselves foreign gods.Now we also see how foolishly the Papists lay hold on this passage and similar passages, in order to commend their abominations by the pretext of antiquity, for vain are their disguises when they say, “O, we have been thus taught by our ancestors, and we have the authority of kings.” But the Prophet here does not speak of fathers indiscriminately; but by fathers he means those who had embraced the true and pure worship of God, as they had been taught by the law; and those kings were alone worthy of imitation, who had faithfully worshipped God according to the doctrine of the law: and thus he excludes all those fathers and kings who had degenerated from the law of Moses. TRAPP, "Jeremiah 19:4 Because they have forsaken me, and have estranged this place, and have burned incense in it unto other gods, whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocents;Ver. 4. Because they have forsaken me.] Jeremiah 16:11.And estranged this place.] Or, Strangely abused it, so as I scarce know it, or can find in my heart to own it.Whom neither they, nor their fathers,] scil., Quamdiu probi fuerunt et pii; so long as they had any goodness in them, saith Jerome. Those afterwards that worshipped, they knew not what (as those Samaritans did, John 4:22), are not worthy to be reckoned on, much less to be imitated. Walk ye not in the statutes of your fathers, neither observe their judgments, nor defile yourselves with their idols. [Ezekiel 20:18]And have filled this place with the blood of innocents.] Especially of infants sacrificed to Moloch in Tophet, so filling up the measure of your sins.PETT, "Jeremiah 19:4-5“Because they have forsaken me, and have estranged this place, and have burned

34

incense in it to other gods, that they knew not, they and their fathers and the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocents, and have built the high places of Baal, to burn their sons in the fire for burnt-offerings to Baal, which I did not command, nor spoke it, neither came it into my mind,”The reason for YHWH’s judgment is now given. It was because they had forsaken Him, and had ‘made foreign’ the place in which they were now standing, by burning incense in it to other gods, foreign gods which they had not known previously. And He adds that they had also filled the whole of Jerusalem with the blood of innocent people, and especially that they had built ‘the high places of Baal’ in order to ‘burn their sons in the fire’ for burnt offerings to Baal, something which YHWH had not only not commanded but was also something which He would not take on His lips or even think about it because it was so horrible.Alternately the ‘estrangement’ may signify estrangement from YHWH, but the consequence is the same for to hand it over to false gods both estranged it from YHWH and treated it as foreign.Note the threefold progression from one increasing horror to another:1. They had burned incense to strange gods, thus multiplying their previous idolatry.2. They had shed innocent blood. This is revealed elsewhere as referring to the shedding of innocent blood throughout Jerusalem, compare Jeremiah 7:6; Jeremiah 2:34; Jeremiah 22:13; Jeremiah 22:17; and see 2 Kings 21:16. The idea was of judicial murder, wholesale violence and severe persecution of the righteous.· 3) They had built high places to Baal and had sacrificed their sons to him. This was a combination of 1). and 2). taken to even further excess. Note how ‘the high places of Topheth’ (Jeremiah 7:31) have now become ‘the high places of Baal’. Baal (which means ‘lord’) was so central in their thinking that they involved his worship with that of other gods such as Moloch, intermingling the ideas.The last part of this verse together with Jeremiah 19:6-7 are very similar in wording to Jeremiah 7:31-32 a. It was clearly something at the very heart of Jeremiah’s and YHWH’s condemnation of Israel/Judah.‘Topheth’ may mean ‘the hearth’ (tephath with the vowels altered to the vowels of bosheth = shame) indicating that it was a place of burning. The high places were erected there by the people for the purpose of offering their children as human sacrifices ‘in the fire’. This is stated to be against all that YHWH had taught. It was ‘beyond His imagination’. He had of course once called Abraham to sacrifice his son, but only so that He could teach the lesson that such sacrifice was not required (Genesis 22). Topheth was in the valley of the sons of Hinnom, an ancient valley known by that name as early as the time of Joshua (Joshua 15:8; Joshua 18:16),

35

probably after its owner. This valley was also used for the burning of refuse, something which eventually made it a symbol of God’s fiery judgment (Gehenna = ge hinnom = the valley of Hinnom). To look over the walls of Jerusalem at night at the refuse fires continually burning far below in the valley must have been an awesome sight and readily recalled God’s fiery judgment.Here Jeremiah linked these human sacrifices with the worship of Baal (‘lord’), although in most of the Old Testament they are connected with the fierce Ammonite god named Molech (melech = king, altered to take the vowels of bosheth = shame) who was worshipped throughout the area (e.g. 2 Kings 23:10). This suggests a certain syncretism between the two gods, which may well have taken place because Molech was called ‘Lord Melech’ = Baal Melech = ‘Lord King’.

5 They have built the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind.

CLARKE, "Offerings unto Baal - A general name for all the popular idols; Baal, Moloch, Ashtaroth, etc.

GILL, "They have also built the high places of Baal,.... Or, they have even built, &c. and so the words explain what is before suggested of their idolatry; these were the temples in which they placed his image, and the altars on which they sacrificed to him; as follows: to burn their sons with fire, for burnt offerings unto Baal; the same idol that is sometimes called Moloch, the names being much of the same signification; the one signifying a "lord" or "master"; the other a king; and to the idol under each name they burned their children with fire, and offered them as burnt offerings unto it; which was a most cruel and barbarous way of sacrificing. Some think they only caused them to pass through two fires; but the text is express for it, that they burnt them with fire, and made burnt offerings of them, as they did with slain beasts. It seems very likely that they did both:

36

which I commanded not; in my law, as the Targum adds; and which was intimation enough to avoid it; though this was not all, he expressly forbad it, Lev_20:2; nor spake it, neither came it into my mind; and it is marvellous it should ever enter into the heart of man; none but Satan himself could ever have devised such a way of worship.

JAMISON, "commanded not — nay, more, I commanded the opposite (Lev_18:21; see Jer_7:31, Jer_7:32).CALVIN, "He at last adds, that that place was filled with the blood of innocents; for there they killed their children. And by this circumstance Jeremiah again amplifies the wickedness of the people; for they had not only despised God and his law, but also cruelly destroyed their innocent infants; and thus he proved them guilty not only of impiety and profaneness in vitiating the worship of God, but also of brutal and barbarous savageness in not sparing innocent blood. COFFMAN, "Verse 6"Therefore, behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that this place shall no more be called Tophet, but The Valley of Slaughter. And I will make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place; and I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hand of them that seek their life: and their dead bodies will I give to be food for the birds of heavens, and for the beasts of the earth.""Tophet ..." (Jeremiah 19:6). The exact meaning of this word is not known; but, "It comes from an Aramaic root that indicates `fireplace.' "[15] It was one of the names given to the valley of Ben-hinnom that contained the shrine of Molech."I will make void ..." (Jeremiah 19:7). The literal meaning of the Hebrew here is, "I will pour out"; and such writers as Cheyne and Barnes suppose that, "Jeremiah carried that bottle full of water and emptied it in the presence of the witnesses as he spoke these words."[16] We are not inclined to accept this speculation because the flask was new; God had not commanded Jeremiah to fill it with water, and there's nothing in the text to support the speculation, interesting as it is."The Valley of Slaughter ..." (Jeremiah 19:6). "It was in this very valley that the Chaldean army encamped, making the very place where they looked for help from their idols to be the scene of their slaughter."[17]TRAPP, "Jeremiah 19:5 They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire [for] burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake [it], neither came [it] into my mind:Ver. 5. Which I commanded not.] Reprobatur voluntarius cultus, et factitiae religiones. See Jeremiah 7:31; Jeremiah 32:35, 2 Kings 23:10.

37

6 So beware, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when people will no longer call this place Topheth or the Valley of Ben Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.

GILL, "Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord,.... Or, "are coming" (o); a little while and it will come to pass, what follows; to which a "behold" is prefixed, as calling for attention and admiration, as well as to assure of the certain performance of it: that this place shall no more be called Tophet: as it had been, from the beating of drums in it, that the cries and shrieks of infants burnt in the fire might not be heard by their parents: nor the valley of the son of Hinnom; which was its name in the times of Joshua, and long before it was called Tophet; but now it should have neither names: but the valley of slaughter; or, "of the slain", as the Targum; from the multitude of those that should be killed here, at the siege and taking of Jerusalem; or that should be brought hither to be buried; see Jer_19:11 and See Gill on Jer_7:32.

HENRY 6-7, "He must endeavour to affect them with the greatness of the desolation that was coming upon them. He must tell them (as he had done before, Jer_7:32) that this valley of the son of Hinnom shall acquire a new name, the valley of slaughter (Jer_19:6), for (Jer_19:7) multitudes shall fall there by the sword, when either they sally out upon the besiegers and are repulsed or attempt to make their escape and are seized: They shall fall before their enemies, who not only endeavour to make themselves masters of their houses and estates, but have such an implacable enmity to them that they seek their lives; they thirst after their blood, and, when they are dead, will not allow a cartel for the burying of the slain, but their carcases shall be meat for the fowls of the heaven and beasts of the earth. What a dismal place will the valley of Tophet be then! And as for those that remain within the city, and will not capitulate with the besiegers, they shall perish for want of food, when first they have eaten the flesh of their sons and

38

daughters, and dearest friends, through the straitness wherewith their enemies shall straiten them, Jer_19:9. This was threatened in the law as an instance of the extremity to which the judgments of God should reduce them (Lev_26:29, Deu_28:53) and was accomplished, Lam_4:10. And, lastly, the whole city shall be desolate, the houses laid in ashes, the inhabitants slain or taken prisoners; there shall be no resort to it, nor any thing in it but what looks rueful and horrid; so that every one that passes by shall be astonished (Jer_19:8), as he had said before, Jer_18:16. That place which holiness had made the joy of the whole earth sin had made the reproach and shame of the whole earth.VI. He must assure them that all their attempts to prevent and avoid this ruin, so long as they continued impenitent and unreformed, would be fruitless and vain (Jer_19:7): I will make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem (of the princes and senators of Judah and Jerusalem) in this place, in the royal palace, which lay on the south side of the city, not far from the place where the prophet now stood. Note, There is no fleeing from God's justice but by fleeing to his mercy. Those that will not make good God's counsel, by humbling themselves under his mighty hand, shall find that God will make void their counsel and blast their projects, which they think ever so well concerted for their own preservation. There is no counsel or strength against the Lord.

JAMISON, "no more ... Tophet — from Hebrew, toph, “drum”; for in sacrificing children to Molech drums were beaten to drown their cries. Thus the name indicated the joy of the people at the fancied propitiation of the god by this sacrifice; in antithesis to its joyless name subsequently.

valley of slaughter — It should be the scene of slaughter, no longer of children, but of men; not of “innocents” (Jer_19:4), but of those who richly deserved their fate. The city could not be assailed without first occupying the valley of Hinnom, in which was the only fountain: hence arose the violent battle there.

K&D 5-13, "Jer_19:6-13In Jer_19:6-13 the threatened punishment is given again at large, and that in two strophes or series of ideas, which explain the emblematical act with the pitcher. The first

series, Jer_19:6-9, is introduced by תי ;which intimates the meaning of the pitcher ,בקand the other, Jer_19:10-13, is bound up with the breaking of the pitcher. But both series are, Jer_19:6, opened by the mention of the locality of the act. As Jer_19:5 was but an expansion of Jer_7:31, so Jer_19:6 is a literal repetition of Jer_7:32. The valley of Benhinnom, with its places for abominable sacrifices (תפת, see on Jer_7:32), shall in the future be called Valley of Slaughter; i.e., at the judgment on Jerusalem it will be the place where the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judah will be slain by the enemy. There God will make void (תי i.e., bring to nothing; for what is poured out comes ,(בקבק playing on ,בקto nothing; cf. Isa_19:3. There they shall fall by the sword in such numbers that their corpses shall be food for the beasts of prey (cf. Jer_7:33), and the city of Jerusalem shall be frightfully ravaged (Jer_19:8, cf. Jer_18:16; Jer_25:9, etc.). מכתה (plural form of suffix without Jod; cf. Ew. §258, a), the wounds she has received. - In Jer_19:9 is added yet another item to complete the awful picture, the terrible famine during the siege,

39

partly taken from the words of Deu_28:53. and Lev_26:29. That this appalling misery did actually come about during the last siege by the Chaldeans, we learn from Lam_4:10. - The second series, Jer_19:10-13, is introduced by the act of breaking the pitcher. This happens before the eyes of the elders who have accompanied Jeremiah thither: to them the explanatory word of the Lord is addressed. As the earthen pitcher, so shall Jerusalem - people and city - be broken to pieces; and that irremediably. This is implied in: as one breaks a potter's vessel, etc. (הרפה for הרפא). The next clause: and in Tophet they shall bury, etc., is omitted by the lxx as a repetition from Jer_7:32, and is object to by Ew., Hitz., and Graf, as not being in keeping with its context. Ew. proposes to insert it before "as one breaketh;" but this transposition only obscures the meaning of the clause. It connects very suitably with the idea of the incurable breaking in sunder. Because the breaking up of Jerusalem and its inhabitants shall be incurable, shall be like the breaking of a pitcher dashed into countless fragments, therefore there will be lack of room in Jerusalem to bury the dead, and the unclean places of Tophet will need to be used for that purpose. With this the further thought of Jer_19:12 and Jer_19:13connects simply and suitably. Thus (as had been said at Jer_19:11) will I do unto this place and its inhabitants, ולתת, and that to make the city as Tophet, i.e., not "a mass of sherds and rubbish, as Tophet now is" (Graf); for neither was Tophet then a rubbish-heap, nor did it so become by the breaking of the pitcher. But Josiah had turned all the place of Tophet in the valley of Benhinnom into an unclean region (2Ki_23:10). All Jerusalem shall become an unclean place like Tophet. This is put in so many words in Jer_19:13 : The houses of Jerusalem shall become unclean like the place Tophet, namely, all houses on whose roofs idolatry has been practised. The construction of הטמאיםcauses some difficulty. The position of the word at the end disfavours our connecting it with the subject בתי, and so does the article, which does not countenance its being taken as predicate. To get rid of the article, J. D. Mich. and Ew. sought to change the reading into תפתה means a Tophet-like place, not Tophet תפתה after Isa_30:33. But ,טמאיםitself, and so gives no meaning to the purpose. No other course is open than to join the word with "the place Tophet:" like the place Tophet, which is unclean. The plural would then be explained less from the collective force of ם מק than from regard to the plural subject. "All the houses" opens a supplementary definition of the subject: as concerning all houses; cf. Ew. §310, a. On the worship of the stars by sacrifice on the housetops, transplanted by Manasseh to Jerusalem, see the expos. of Zep_1:5 and 2Ki_21:3. ' ,והסcoinciding literally with Jer_7:18; the inf. absol. being attached to the verb. finit. of the former clause (Ew. §351, c.). - Thus far the word of the Lord to Jeremiah, which he was to proclaim in the valley of Benhinnom. - The execution of the divine commission is, as being a matter of course, not expressly recounted, but is implied in Jer_19:14 as having taken place.

CALVIN, "We saw in the last Lecture that the Prophet was sent by God’s bidding to the house of the potter, that he might there take an earthen bottle, carry it to Topher, and there explain the judgment of God, which was nigh at hand on account of his worship being violated. And he shewed why the Jews deserved reproof, even because they made incense to Baal, built groves and high places for themselves, and committed their sons and daughters to the fire: they were not only profane towards

40

God, but also cruel towards innocent souls. Now, lest they pretended an excuse, he also added, that such a thing never came to God’s mind; and this is worthy of notice, because God by this one expression fulminates against all those inventions with which men delight themselves. As then there is no command, it follows that whatever is thus attempted is frivolous and useless.He now denounces punishment, The days are coming, or shall come, in which this place shall no more be called Tophet, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom, but The valley of slaughter. This seemed incredible to the Jews; for they had chosen that place for themselves to perform their superstitions: they thought therefore that a great part of their safety depended on their false worship.As to the word Tophet, some think that it is to be taken simply for hell, or for eternal death; but this cannot by any means be admitted. More probable is their opinion who derive it from תף, teph, which means a drum; for they think that they did beat drums when infants were killed, that their cries might not be heard. But as this is only a conjecture, I know not whether another reason may be given. Some derive the word from יפה iphe, which signifies to be decorous or beautiful; and this etymology has something apparently in its favor. And perhaps it ought to be so taken in Job 17:6, where the holy man complains that he was become a proverb, and that he had been תפת Tophet, in the presence of all. There are indeed some who explain the word there as signifying something monstrous, and thus take it in a bad sense. But it seems rather to have been put in contrast with the former clause, — he had been a pleasant spectacle, but he was now become detestable. But they who take the word there as meaning hell, do so entirely without any reason, for that Job perished, seeing and knowing his perdition, as they say, is a forced view. I doubt not then but that he said, that he had been תפת Tophet; that is, an object of joy and of praise, but that he was then a sad and mournful spectacle. And it is certain that his name, תפת, Tophet, was given to the valley of Hinnom, because of the hilarity and joy which thence arose to the people; for they thought that God was propitious to them, when they so sedulously offered there their sacrifices, and yet they provoked his wrath. Then Tophet is to be taken in a good sense, when we regard the origin of the word. It is indeed true that in Isaiah 30:33, Tophet is to be taken for Gehenna; but it may be that the prophets had now begun so to execrate the place as to call hell indiscriminately Gehennon and Tophet; for the word Gehenna, as we have stated elsewhere, had its origin from the same place; it is indeed corrupted, but its origin is not doubtful. Now, the reason why the prophets and other faithful men called the place hell, was plainly this, — because the devil reigned in that place, when God’s worship became vitiated, and the whole of true religion was subverted; and especially, because superstition became so deeply fixed in the hearts of the people, that it could not be rooted up except by an extraordinary force and power.However this may have been, we may conclude from this passage, as well as from other passages, that this name was given on account of the joy experienced there, even because they thought themselves altogether happy, as God was pacified towards them. But what does Jeremiah say? This place shall be no more called

41

Tophet, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom, but The valley of slaughter. This seemed, as I have said, incredible to the Jews. But it however behoved the Prophet boldly to declare what was to be. It afterwards follows, —TRAPP, "Jeremiah 19:6 Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that this place shall no more be called Tophet, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom, but The valley of slaughter.Ver. 6. This place shall no more.] See Jeremiah 7:32. Things are repeated, that they may be the better observed.PETT, "Jeremiah 19:6“Therefore, behold, the days come, says YHWH, that this place will no more be called Topheth, nor The Valley of the son of Hinnom, but The Valley of Slaughter.”YHWH now warns that the day was coming when that particular valley would no longer be called Topheth, nor the valley of ben-Hinnom, but would be called the Valley of Slaughter, the idea being that it would subsequently become a graveyard for the huge number who would be slaughtered when the invasion came, and would also be the repository for many unburied corpses (see Jeremiah 7:32, ‘they will bury in Topheth until there is no place left for burying.’). It had been rendered unclean by the activities conducted there. It would therefore be made even more unclean as a result of the dead that it would contain.

7 “‘In this place I will ruin[a] the plans of Judah and Jerusalem. I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies, at the hands of those who want to kill them, and I will give their carcasses as food to the birds and the wild animals.

BARNES, "Make void - The verb used here is that from which “bottle” Jer_19:1 is derived, and as it represents the sound made by the water running out, it would be better translated, “pour out.” Jeremiah perhaps carried the bottle to Tophet full of water, the symbol in the East of life Isa_35:6; Isa_41:18, and at these words emptied it before the assembled elders.

42

CLARKE, "I will make void the counsel of Judah - Probably this refers to some determination made to proclaim themselves independent, and pay no more tribute to the Chaldeans.

To be meat for the fowls - See on Jer_7:33 (note).

GILL, "And I will make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place,.... The counsel which they took in this place and agreed to, in offering their sons and daughters to idols; and which they took with these idols and their priests, from whom they expected assistance and relief; and all their schemes and projects for their deliverance; these were all made to spear to be mere empty things, as empty as the earthen bottle he had in his hand, to which there is an allusion; there being an elegant paronomasia between the word (p) here used and that: and I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies: such as sallied out from the city, or attempted to make their escape: and by the hands of them that seek their lives; and so would not spare them, when they fell into them: and their carcasses will I give to be meat for the fowls of the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth: signifying that they should have no burial, but their slain bodies should lie upon the earth, and be fed upon by fowls and beasts.

JAMISON, "make void the counsel — defeat their plans for repelling the enemy (2Ch_32:1-4; Isa_19:3; Isa_22:9, Isa_22:11). Or their schemes of getting help by having recourse to idols [Calvin].

in this place — The valley of Hinnom was to be the place of the Chaldean encampment; the very place where they looked for help from idols was to be the scene of their own slaughter.

CALVIN, "This amplification further exasperated the minds of the people, — that they in vain trusted that this place would be to them a fortress. For, as we have already stated, they had persuaded themselves that it was abundantly sufficient to reconcile them with God, when they spared not their own children, and so zealously performed tlheir acts of worship. And hypocrites are commonly inflated with this presumption, for they prefer what pleases them to what pleases God; they regard not what the law bids, what God approves, but they adore their own inventions. Since then almost all the superstitious are filled with such a presumption, God here rightly declares, that he would make void their counsels (214)It is indeed certain that there is neither wisdom nor counsel in deluded men, while they thus devise new and frivolous modes of worship, for these are sheer mummeries. But we ought to observe what Paul says in Colossians 2:23, that all the fictions which men devise for themselves have in them some appearance of wisdom; for we know that wherever our imagination may carry us, we think ourselves wise,

43

and that whatever God prescribes becomes insipid to us. Then the Prophet concedes “counsel,” though improperly, to frivolous and vain inventions, but not without reason, for experience teaches us sufficiently, that men ever take great delight in their superstitions, for they wish to subject God as it were to their own will. He then says, by way of concession, that the counsels of the whole people, especially of the city Jerusalem, would be made void, which was above others the teacher of errors, while yet the doctrine of the law ought especially to have prevailed there. And it may be also that there is an allusion to that word בקבק bekbek, which we have before seen, and which the Prophet will repeat again, for it means to make void or empty, though some think it to be a factitious word, because the sound, bekbek, is produced while the bottle is emptied. However this may be, the allusion is still sufficiently striking.He afterwards adds, And I will lay them prostrate by the sword before their enemies, and by the hand of those who seek their life. In this second part, the Prophet intimates that the hatred entertained by their enemies towards the Jews would not be common. Wars are carried on sometimes in such a way, that the conquerors are satisfied with the spoils; but the Prophet intimates, that the cruelty of their enemies would be such, that they would seek the life of the whole people, and delight in slaughter; as though he had said, that they would be deadly enemies and altogether implacable. He will again repeat these words, and in the same sense.He then adds, I will give your carcase to be meat to the birds of heaven, and to the beasts of the field (215) We have said elsewhere that it is deemed a punishment inflicted by heaven when the carcases of the dead remain unburied; for it is the last office of humanity to bury the dead. And this is a distinction which God would have to be between men and brute animals, for animals have not the honor of a burial. It has also been ever granted as a singular privilege to men to be buried, in order to set forth the hope of resurrection. When, therefore, a burial is denied, it is a proof of extreme dishonor. It has indeed often happened that the saints have been without a burial; but temporal punishment is ever turned to salvation to God’s children. As to the reprobate it must be deemed a judgment from God, when he casts away their carcases, as then there is no difference between them and animals. But I have treated this subject more fully elsewhere, and I shall not proceed with it now. It follows — TRAPP, "Jeremiah 19:7 And I will make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place; and I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hands of them that seek their lives: and their carcases will I give to be meat for the fowls of the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth.Ver. 7. And I will make void the counsel of Judah.] As vain and empty as this earthen bottle now is. See on Jeremiah 19:1, and take notice of an elegant alliteration in the original.And their carcases will I give.] See Jeremiah 7:33; Jeremiah 16:4.

44

PETT, "Jeremiah 19:7“And I will make void (literally ‘I will pour out’ or ‘gurgle out’) the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place, and I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hand of those who seek their life, and their dead bodies will I give to be food for the birds of the heavens, and for the beasts of the earth.”Having in mind the symbolism of the narrow-necked gurgling jar (baqbuq) YHWH declares that He will ‘pour out’ (baqaq) the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place, that is, He would reveal their counsel for what it was by pouring it out on Jerusalem’s rubbish heap, and on its place of slaughter and potential graveyard. And the consequence will be that YHWH will cause the badly guided people of Judah to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hand of those who seek their life, and this will be followed by their dead bodies being given as food to the vultures and the beastly scavengers (compare Jeremiah 7:33), always considered the most hideous of fates.

8 I will devastate this city and make it an object of horror and scorn; all who pass by will be appalled and will scoff because of all its wounds.

GILL, "And I will make this city desolate, and an hissing,.... An hissing to its enemies; an hissing because desolate; when its walls should be broken down, its houses burnt with fire, and its inhabitants put to the sword, or carried captive: everyone that passeth thereby shall be astonished, and hiss; surprised to see the desolations of it; that a city once so famous and flourishing should be reduced to such a miserable condition; and yet hiss by way of detestation and abhorrence of it, and for joy at its ruin: because of all the plagues thereof: by which it was brought to desolation, as the sword, famine, burning, and captivity.CALVIN, "Jeremiah proceeds with his denunciation, and it was necessary for him to add this amplification, that he might penetrate into their hard and perverse

45

hearts; for had he employed only a single sentence, or a common mode of speaking, in describing their calamity and the ruin of the city, they would not have been at all moved. Hence he enlarges on the subject, and advances with greater vehemence, and always speaks in the person of God, that his denunciation might have greater weight.I will set, etc. Here is to be noticed a second reason; for it was not enough that a calamity should be denounced on the Jews, without adding this, that it was inflicted by God’s hand, and that thus the punishment of their wickedness was just. Then he says, I will set this city for an astonishment; for so in this place the word שמה sheme ought to be rendered, inasmuch as the reason afterwards follows, astonished shall be whosoever shall pass through it (216) He adds also, for a hissing, which is rather a mark of detestation than of scorn; yet the desolation of the whole land, and also the ruin of the holy city in which God had chosen an habitation for himself, might have filled all with terror, and ought justly to have done so. Whosoever, he says, shall pass through shall be astonished, and shall hiss on account of all her stroke; (217) for it was not to be a common calamity, but one in which might be seen God’s dreadful judgment. It follows —“And I will make this city an object of astonishment and of hissing.”The Vulgate and the Syriac are the same; but the Septuagint and the Targum have “desolation” instead of “astonishment.” The word שמה signifies both, as in Hebrew the same word often expresses the cause and the effect: desolation is the cause, astonishment is the effect. The primary meaning is what is given mostly by the Septuagint and very seldom the secondary. The literal rendering of the sentence is, —“And I will set this city for an astonishmentand for a hissing.”— Ed. COFFMAN, "Verse 8"And I will make this city an astonishment, and a hissing; everyone that passeth thereby shall be astonished and hiss because of all the plagues thereof. And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters; and they shall eat everyone the flesh of his friend, in the siege and in the distress, wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their life, shall distress them."This terrible warning is an almost verbatim quotation from Deuteronomy 28:53, in which the Great Lawgiver Moses had warned Israel of their fate IF they should give up serving their true God. Israel had indeed defaulted in that very act of disobedience; and now Jeremiah warned that the Mosaic penalty would be enforced.

46

Did such an awful thing actually happen? Alas, the answer must be that it did. (1) In the siege of Samaria that led to the fall of the Northern kingdom in 722 B.C. (2 Kings 6:26ff);[18] (2) again in 586 B.C. in the Babylonian invasion by Nebuchadnezzar; and (3) also in A.D. 70 preceding the total destruction of Jerusalem by Vespasian and Titus. The Biblical confirmation of these sad episodes is found in Lamentations 2:20; 4:10; 2 Kings 6:28-29; and the historical record of Josephus confirms that in 70 A.D.[19]PETT, "Jeremiah 19:8“And I will make this city an astonishment, and a hissing. Every one who passes by it will be astonished and hiss because of all its plagues ,”So great will be the plagues that come on Jerusalem that the city will be ‘an astonishment’ and a total spectacle to be ‘hissed at’, so that all who pass by it will be astonished and hiss because of them (compare Lamentations 2:15-16). And this will be the result of the activity of YHWH, especially as described in the next verse.

9 I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh because their enemies will press the siege so hard against them to destroy them.’

CLARKE, "I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons - This was literally fulfilled when Jerusalem was besieged by the Romans. This also the prophet might have had in view.

GILL, "And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons, and the flesh of their daughters,.... For want of food; the famine should be so great and pressing. Jeremiah, that foretells this, was a witness of it, and has left it on record, Lam_4:10; and they shall eat everyone the flesh of his friend. The Targum interprets it, the

47

goods or substance of his neighbour; which is sometimes the sense of eating the flesh of another; but as it is to be taken in a literal sense, in the preceding clause, so in this: so it should be, in the siege and straitness, wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lives, shall straiten them; the siege of Jerusalem should be so close, that no provision could be got in to the relief of the inhabitants; which obliged them to take the shocking methods before mentioned. Jerom observes, that though this was fulfilled at the Babylonish captivity, yet more fully when Jerusalem was besieged by Vespasian and Titus, and in the times of Hadrian. Josephus (q) gives us a most shocking relation of a woman eating her own son.

JAMISON, "(Deu_28:53; Lam_4:10).CALVIN, "Here the Prophet goes farther — that so atrocious would be the calamity, that even fathers and mothers would not abstain from their children, but would devour their flesh. This was indeed monstrous. It has sometimes happened that husbands, in a state of extreme despondency, have killed their wives and children, (anxious to exempt them from the lust of enemies,) or have kindled a fire in the midst of the forum, to cast their children and wives on the pile, and afterwards to die themselves; but it was more barbarous and brutal for a father to eat the flesh of his son. The Prophet then describes an unusual vengeance of God, which could not be classed among the calamities which usually happen to mankind.We know that this was also done in the last siege of that city; for Josephus shews at large that mothers in a brutal manner slew their children, and that they so lay in wait for one another that they snatched at anything to eat. This was also an evidence of God’s dreadful vengeance.But it was no wonder that God visited in such an awful manner the sins of those who had in such various ways, and for so long a time, provoked him; for if we compare the Jews with other nations, we shall find that their impiety, and ingratitude, and perverseness, exceeded the crimes of all nations. Then justly did God inflict such a punishment, which even at this day cannot be referred to without horror. The whole indeed is to be ascribed to his judgment; for it was he who fed (218) the fathers with the flesh of their children; for as they had sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons, as before stated, so it was necessary that the vengeance of God should be openly pointed out as by the finger. This was done when God imprinted marks on the bodies of children, which even the blind could not but perceive.He adds, In the tribulation, (219) and straightness with which their enemies shall straiten them. We have said that those who had been long besieged, and were not able to resist, have been often reduced to the necessity to freeing their wives, or their children, or themselves, from dishonor; but to protract life in the manner here mentioned was altogether brutal. It follows —

48

COKE, "Jeremiah 19:9. I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons— See 2 Kings 6:29.REFLECTIONS.—1st, To awaken conviction in the hearts of a stupid people, every method is tried, that they may be left at last utterly inexcusable.1. Jeremiah is ordered down to the valley of the son of Hinnom, the place where their most shocking idolatries were committed, and the destined spot of their terrible execution. He is commanded to take an earthen pitcher, and, as witnesses of what he was about to do and say, to bring with him some of the ancients of the priests and people; for when God speaks by the meanest of his prophets, the greatest should not think themselves above attending their ministry.2. God will there tell him his message, which he must proclaim aloud as a herald; and the purport of it is most tremendous, which all are summoned to attend, from the greatest to the least; and enough it is to make the ears of every one that heareth it to tingle, as thunderstruck with the dreadful sound. The sins charged upon them are most shocking and aggravated; apostacy from God, profanation of his temple, foul idolatry, barbarous cruelty, the inhuman sacrifice of infants to their abominable deities, yea, even the burning their sons with fire, for burnt-offerings unto Baal; sacrifices abhorred of God, and such as he never thought of, nor expected from his worshippers. For these abominations judgment is threatened proportionate to such atrocious guilt: on that very spot the wrath of God should be executed upon them, and the valley acquire a new name: no more called Tophet, from the drums which were to drown the cries of infants burning alive in sacrifice to Moloch, but the valley of Slaughter, from the multitudes who should there be massacred by the Chaldeans. Their counsels then should be made vain, which in that place they had taken to oppose their invaders, or to fly to their idols for relief in the day of their calamity. There they must fall by the sword of their merciless enemies, thirsting for their blood; their carcases ignominiously exposed, and unburied; a prey to the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the earth. Such plagues, and desolations shall come upon their city and country, that astonishment at the greatness of the calamity shall mix with indignation against their sins in every passer-by: yea, to such straits should they be reduced in the siege, that famine should compel them to feed upon their dearest friends, and even their children, on their dead corpses, or murdered, to satisfy their raging hunger; a scene of wretchedness which makes us shudder but to relate! O sin! sin! what hast thou done!2nd. The judgment denounced is,1. Confirmed by a significant sign. The earthen bottle in his hand is dashed in pieces on the ground, and the explication of it given, that so utter and irreparable should be their destruction. The city and people should be broken like this vessel, and the spot whereon they stood be the place of execution, where so many should be slain,

49

that graves should be wanting to bury them; yea, the city of Jerusalem should be as Tophet, and every house defiled with the corpses of the slain, and rendered filthy and abominable as that detested place, because of the idolatries which had been practised therein, and the incense which on their roofs they had offered to the host of heaven.2. What he now spoke in the presence of the ancients, in the valley of the son of Hinnom, he repeats solemnly in the court of the Lord's house before all the people, that if they continue impenitent, they may be at least inexcusable. All the denunciations of wrath which God had spoken by Jeremiah were now ready to be executed on Jerusalem and on all her towns, because they have hardened their necks, that they might not hear my words; obstinately persisting in their iniquities, and deaf to all admonition. Note; (1.) Ministers must deliver their own souls, whether men will hear, or whether they will forbear. (2.) They who harden their hearts against God's warnings, must perish without remedy. (3.) In the day of judgment the damned will only have themselves to blame, and the sense of their wilfulness, will aggravate their misery. TRAPP, "Jeremiah 19:9 And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege and straitness, wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lives, shall straiten them.Ver. 9. And I will cause them to eat the flesh.] This, as it was threatened, [Leviticus 26:29 Deuteronomy 28:23] so accordingly accomplished. [Lamentations 2:20; Lamentations 4:10] Ptolemy Lathurus, king of Egypt, barbarously slew thirty thousand Jews, and forced the rest to feed upon the flesh of those that were slain.PETT, "Jeremiah 19:9“And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they will eat every one the flesh of his friend, in the siege and in the distress, by which their enemies, and those who seek their life, will distress them.”For in words based on YHWH’s curse as pronounced in Deuteronomy 28:53 on those who would be disobedient to His covenant, YHWH declares that He will cause His disobedient people to eat the flesh both of their sons and their daughters, and of their friends, because of the distress that will be caused to them by their enemies in the coming siege. Those who had sacrificed their sons and daughters to idols under the influence of idolatry would in a grotesque way now find themselves reaping the consequences of that behaviour, their morality having been shaped and distorted by their earlier behaviour.The language is very bold, but it is not to be taken as really saying that YHWH will be directly responsible for the details of what will happen. The basis behind the words is rather that YHWH is taking responsibility for not stopping the

50

approaching Babylonian siege, a siege in which conditions will become so bad, and hunger so dreadful, that the people themselves will indulge in cannibalism. But the actual working out of the invasion and the decisions and reaction of the defenders are to be seen as their own responsibility and resulting from their own choice. YHWH is by no means justifying or encouraging cannibalism.It is often asked why God brings about such terrible things, and it is important in this regard to bring out the difference between YHWH’s direct actions where He is directly responsible for everything that happens, and His ‘causing of events’ whereby He is the mainspring while the actual detailed outworking is the result of the activity of sinful man. There is a combination of sovereignty on God’s part and free will on man’s part. God encourages men to act, He does not encourage them to sin.

10 “Then break the jar while those who go with you are watching,

GILL, "Then shall thou break the bottle in the sight of the men that go with thee. The earthen bottle he was bid to get of the potter, Jer_19:1; this he is ordered to break in pieces before the eyes of the ancients of and of the priests that went with him out Jerusalem to Tophet, as an emblem of the easy, sure, and utter destruction of Jerusalem; for nothing is more easily broken than an earthen vessel; and so easily was Jerusalem destroyed by the Chaldean army; nor can an earthen pot resist any force that is used against it; nor could the inhabitants of Jerusalem withstand the force of Nebuchadnezzar's army; and an earthen vessel once broken cannot be put together again; a new one must be made; which was the case both of the city and temple; and which, upon the return from the captivity, were not repaired, but rebuilt.

HENRY 10-13, "The message of wrath delivered in the foregoing verses is here enforced, that it might gain credit, two ways: -

I. By a visible sign. The prophet was to take along with him an earthen bottle (Jer_19:1), and, when he had delivered his message, he was to break the bottle to pieces (Jer_19:10), and the same that were auditors of the sermon must be spectators of the sign. He had compared this people, in the chapter before, to the potter's clay, which is easily marred in the making. But some might say, “It is past that with us; we have been made and hardened long since.” “And what though you be,” says he, “the potter's vessel is as soon broken in the hand of any man as the vessel while it is soft clay is marred in the potter's hand, and its case is, in this respect, much worse, that the vessel while it is soft 51

clay, though it be marred, may be moulded again, but, after it is hardened, when it is broken it can never be pieced again.” Perhaps what they see will affect them more than what they only hear talk of; that is the intention of sacramental signs, and teaching by symbols was anciently used. In the explication of this sign he must inculcate what he had before said, with a further reference to the place where this was done, in the valley of Tophet. 1. As the bottle was easily, irresistibly, and irrecoverably broken by the Chaldean army, Jer_19:11. They depended much upon the firmness of their constitution, and the fixedness of their courage, which they thought hardened them like a vessel of brass; but the prophet shows that all that did but harden them like a vessel of earth, which, though hard, is brittle and sooner broken than that which is not so hard. Though they were made vessels of honour, still they were vessels of earth, and so they shall be made to know if they dishonour God and themselves, and serve not the purposes for which they were made. It is God himself, who made them, that resolves to unmake them: I will break this people and this city, dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel; the doom of the heathen (Psa_2:9, Rev_2:27), but now Jerusalem's doom, Isa_30:14. A potter's vessel, when once broken, cannot be made whole again, cannot be cured, so the word is. The ruin of Jerusalem shall be an utter ruin; no hand can repair it but his that broke it; and if they return to him, though he has torn, he will heal. 2. This was done in Tolphet, to signify two things: - (1.) That Tophet should be the receptacle of the slain: They shall bury in Tophet till there be no place to bury any more there; they shall jostle for room to lay their dead, and a very little room will then serve those who, while they lived, laid house to house and field to field. Those that would be placed alone in the midst of the earth while they were above ground, and obliged all about them to keep their distance, must lie with the multitude when they are underground, for there are innumerable before them. (2.) That Tophet should be a resemblance of the whole city (Jer_19:12): I will make this city as Tophet. As they had filled the valley of Tophet with the slain which they sacrificed to their idols, so God will fill the whole city with the slain that shall fall as sacrifices to the justice of God. We read (2Ki_23:10) of Josiah's defiling Tophet, because it had been abused to idolatry, which he did (as should seem, Jer_19:14) by filling it with the bones of men; and, whatever it was before, thenceforward it was looked upon as a detestable place. Dead carcases, and other filth of the city, were carried thither, and a fire was continually kept there for the burning of it. This was the posture of that valley when Jeremiah was sent thither to prophesy; and so execrable a place was it looked upon to be that, in the language of our Saviour's time, hell was called, in allusion to it, Gehenna, the valley of Hinnom. “Now” (says God) “since that blessed reformation, when Tophet was defiled, did not proceed as it ought to have done, nor prove a thorough reformation, but though the idols in Tophet were abolished and made odious those in Jerusalem remained, therefore will I do with the city as Josiah did by Tophet, fill it with the bodies of men, and make it a heap of rubbish.” Even the houses of Jerusalem, andthose of the kings of Judah, the royal palaces not excepted, shall be defiled as the place of Tophet (Jer_19:13), and for the same reason, because of the idolatries that have been committed there; since they will not defile them by a reformation, God will defile them by a destruction, because upon the roofs of their houses they have burnt incense unto the host of heaven. The flat roofs of their houses were sometimes used by devout people as convenient places for prayer (Act_10:9), and by idolaters they were used as high places, on which they sacrificed to strange gods, especially to the host of heaven, the sun, moon, and stars, that there they might be so much nearer to them and have a clearer and fuller view of them. We read of those that worshipped the host of heaven upon the house-tops (Zep_1:5), and of altars on the top of the upper chamber of Ahaz, 2Ki_23:12. 52

This sin upon the house-tops brought a curse into the house, which consumed it, and made it a dunghill like Tophet.JAMISON, "break ... bottle — a symbolical action, explained in Jer_19:11.the men — the elders of the people and of the priests (Jer_19:1; compare Jer_51:63, Jer_51:64).

K&D 10-13, "The purpose for which Jeremiah was to buy the earthen jar is told in Jer_19:10, and the meaning of breaking it in the valley of Benhinnom is shown in Jer_ to pour out, is a jar with a narrow neck, so called from the ,בקק from ,בקבק .19:11-13sound heard when liquid is poured out of it, although the vessel was used for storing honey, 1Ki_14:3. The appellation צר former of earthen vessels, i.e., potter, is given to ,יdenote the jar as one which, on being broken, would shiver into many fragments. Before "of the elders of the people" a verb seems to be awanting, for which cause many supply ולקחת (according to Jer_41:12; Jer_43:10, etc.), rightly so far as sense is concerned; but we are hardly entitled to assume a lacuna in the text. That assumption is opposed by the ו before מזקני; for we cannot straightway presume that this ו was put in after the verb had dropped out of the text. In that case the whole word would have been restored. We have here rather, as Schnur. saw, a bold constructio praegnans, the verb "buy" being also joined in zeugma with "of the elders:" buy a jar and (take) certain of the elders; cf. similar, only less bold, zeugmatic constr. in Job_4:10; Job_10:12; Isa_58:5. "Elders of the priests," as in 2Ki_19:2, probably identical with the "princes (שרי) of the priests," 2Ch_36:14, are doubtless virtually the same as the "heads (ראשי) of the priests," Neh_12:7, the priests highest in esteem, not merely for their age, but also in virtue of their rank; just as the "elders of the people" were a permanent representation of the people, consisting of the heads of tribes, houses or septs, and families; cf. 1Ki_8:1-3, and my Bibl. Archäol. ii. S. 218. Jeremiah was to take elders of the people and of the priesthood, because it was most readily to be expected of them that the word of God to be proclaimed would find a hearing amongst them. As to the valley of Benhinnom, see on Jer_7:31. שער but Pottery or ,(Job_9:7; Jdg_8:13 ,חרס after) not Sun-gate ,החרסותSherd-gate, from חרס חרסות .potter's clay. The Chet ,חרסית .in rabbin ,חרש = is the ancient form, not the modern (Hitz.), for the Keri is adapted to the rabbinical form. The clause, "which is before the Harsuth-gate," is not meant to describe more particularly the locality, sufficiently well known in Jerusalem, but has reference to the act to be performed there. The name, gate of חרסות, which nowhere else occurs, points no doubt to the breaking to shivers of the jar. Hence we are rather to translate Sherd-gate than Pottery-gate, the name having probably arisen amongst the people from the broken fragments which lay about this gate. Comm. are not at one as to which of the known city gates is meant. Hitz. and Kimchi are wrong in thinking of a gate of the court of the temple - the southern one. The context demands one of the city gates, two of which led into the Benhinnom valley: the Spring-or Fountain-gate at the south-east corner, and the Dung-gate on the south-west side of Zion; see on Neh_3:13-15. One of these two must be meant, but which of them it cannot be decided. there Jeremiah is to cry aloud the words which follow, Jer_19:3-8, and which bear on the kings of Judah and the

53

inhabitants of Jerusalem. "Kings" in the plural, as in Jer_13:13, because the matter concerned not the reigning king only, but his successors too, who had been guilty of the sins to be punished.Jer_19:3-5

In Jer_19:3-5 the threatening is summarily set forth. Horrible evil will the Lord bring on this place, i.e., Jerusalem. The ears of every one that hears it will tingle, so utterly stunning will the news of it turn out to be; cf. 2Ki_21:12 and 1Sa_3:11, where we find תצלינה; cf. Ew. §197, a. This they have brought on themselves by their dreadful sins. They have forsaken Jahveh, disowned this place; נכר , prop. find strange, Deu_32:27, then treat as strange, deny, Job_21:29. In substance: they have not treated Jerusalem as the city of the sanctuary of their God, but, as it mentioned after, they have burnt incense in it to other (strange) gods. The words: they and their fathers, and the kings of Judah, are not the subject to "knew not," as is "they and their," etc., in Jer_9:15; Jer_16:13, but to the preceding verb of the principal clause. "And have filled the city with the blood of innocents." This Grot. and others understand by the blood of the children slain forMoloch; and for this, appeal is made to Psa_106:37., where the pouring out of innocent blood is explained to be that of sons and daughters offered to idols. But this passage cannot be the standard for the present one, neither can the statement that here we have to deal with idolatry alone. This latter is petitio principii. If shedding the blood of innocents had been said of offerings to Moloch, then Jer_19:5 must be taken as epexegesis. But in opposition to this we have not only the parallelism of the clauses, but also and especially the circumstance, that not till Jer_19:5 is mention made of altars on which to offer children of Moloch. We therefore understand the filling of Jerusalem with the blood of innocents, according to Jer_7:6, cf. Jer_2:34 and Jer_22:3, Jer_22:17, of judicial murder or of bloody persecution of the godly; and on two grounds: 1. because alongside of idolatry we always find mentioned as the chief sin the perversion of justice to the shedding of innocent blood (cf. the passages cited), so that this sin would not likely be omitted here, as one cause of the dreadful judgment about to pass on Jerusalem; 2. because our passage recalls the very wording of 2Ki_21:16, where, after mentioning his idolatry, it is said of Manasseh: Also innocent blood hath he shed, until he made Jerusalem full (מלא) to the brink.

The climax in the enumeration of sins in these verses is accordingly this: 1. The disowning of the holiness of Jerusalem as the abode of the Lord by the public practice of idolatry; 2. the shedding of innocent blood as extremity of injustice and godless judicial practices; 3. as worst of all abominations, the building of altars for burning their own children to Moloch. That the Moloch-sacrifices are mentioned last, as being worst of all, is shown by the three relative clauses: which I have not commanded, etc., which by an impassioned gradation of phrases mark God's abomination of these horrors. On this subject cf. Jer_7:31 and Jer_32:35.Jer_19:6-13

In Jer_19:6-13 the threatened punishment is given again at large, and that in two strophes or series of ideas, which explain the emblematical act with the pitcher. The first series, Jer_19:6-9, is introduced by תי ;which intimates the meaning of the pitcher ,בקand the other, Jer_19:10-13, is bound up with the breaking of the pitcher. But both series are, Jer_19:6, opened by the mention of the locality of the act. As Jer_19:5 was but an expansion of Jer_7:31, so Jer_19:6 is a literal repetition of Jer_7:32. The valley of

54

Benhinnom, with its places for abominable sacrifices (תפת, see on Jer_7:32), shall in the future be called Valley of Slaughter; i.e., at the judgment on Jerusalem it will be the place where the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judah will be slain by the enemy. There God will make void (תי i.e., bring to nothing; for what is poured out comes ,(בקבק playing on ,בקto nothing; cf. Isa_19:3. There they shall fall by the sword in such numbers that their corpses shall be food for the beasts of prey (cf. Jer_7:33), and the city of Jerusalem shall be frightfully ravaged (Jer_19:8, cf. Jer_18:16; Jer_25:9, etc.). מכתה (plural form of suffix without Jod; cf. Ew. §258, a), the wounds she has received. - In Jer_19:9 is added yet another item to complete the awful picture, the terrible famine during the siege, partly taken from the words of Deu_28:53. and Lev_26:29. That this appalling misery did actually come about during the last siege by the Chaldeans, we learn from Lam_4:10. - The second series, Jer_19:10-13, is introduced by the act of breaking the pitcher. This happens before the eyes of the elders who have accompanied Jeremiah thither: to them the explanatory word of the Lord is addressed. As the earthen pitcher, so shall Jerusalem - people and city - be broken to pieces; and that irremediably. This is implied in: as one breaks a potter's vessel, etc. (הרפה for הרפא). The next clause: and in Tophet they shall bury, etc., is omitted by the lxx as a repetition from Jer_7:32, and is object to by Ew., Hitz., and Graf, as not being in keeping with its context. Ew. proposes to insert it before "as one breaketh;" but this transposition only obscures the meaning of the clause. It connects very suitably with the idea of the incurable breaking in sunder. Because the breaking up of Jerusalem and its inhabitants shall be incurable, shall be like the breaking of a pitcher dashed into countless fragments, therefore there will be lack of room in Jerusalem to bury the dead, and the unclean places of Tophet will need to be used for that purpose. With this the further thought of Jer_19:12 and Jer_19:13connects simply and suitably. Thus (as had been said at Jer_19:11) will I do unto this place and its inhabitants, ולתת, and that to make the city as Tophet, i.e., not "a mass of sherds and rubbish, as Tophet now is" (Graf); for neither was Tophet then a rubbish-heap, nor did it so become by the breaking of the pitcher. But Josiah had turned all the place of Tophet in the valley of Benhinnom into an unclean region (2Ki_23:10). All Jerusalem shall become an unclean place like Tophet. This is put in so many words in Jer_19:13 : The houses of Jerusalem shall become unclean like the place Tophet, namely, all houses on whose roofs idolatry has been practised. The construction of הטמאיםcauses some difficulty. The position of the word at the end disfavours our connecting it with the subject בתי, and so does the article, which does not countenance its being taken as predicate. To get rid of the article, J. D. Mich. and Ew. sought to change the reading into תפתה means a Tophet-like place, not Tophet תפתה after Isa_30:33. But ,טמאיםitself, and so gives no meaning to the purpose. No other course is open than to join the word with "the place Tophet:" like the place Tophet, which is unclean. The plural would then be explained less from the collective force of ם מק than from regard to the plural subject. "All the houses" opens a supplementary definition of the subject: as concerning all houses; cf. Ew. §310, a. On the worship of the stars by sacrifice on the housetops, transplanted by Manasseh to Jerusalem, see the expos. of Zep_1:5 and 2Ki_21:3. ' ,והסcoinciding literally with Jer_7:18; the inf. absol. being attached to the verb. finit. of the former clause (Ew. §351, c.). - Thus far the word of the Lord to Jeremiah, which he was to proclaim in the valley of Benhinnom. - The execution of the divine commission is, as being a matter of course, not expressly recounted, but is implied in Jer_19:14 as having

55

taken place.

CALVIN, "Jeremiah summoned witnesses, that the confirmation of the prophecy might be more fully attested to the people. With regard to the history of this transaction we may add, that he was first sent to the house of the potter, from whence he procured the bottle; he then went to Tophet, and there spoke against their impious and corrupt superstitions; and at last, to seal the prophecy, he broke the bottle in the presence of the witnesses whom he had brought with him. And we have said that it was necessary thus to deal with a people, not only ignorant and stupid, but, which is worse, perverse and obstinate. There was not only importance in the sign, that they might thence learn the doom of the city and of the whole land, but it was also a solemn sealing of the prophecy; and on this account he was commanded to break the vessel, even that he might show, by a visible act, the near approach of God’s vengeance, of which the Jews had no apprehension. It follows — COFFMAN, ""Then shalt thou break the bottle in the sight of the men that go with thee, and shalt say unto them, Thus saith Jehovah of hosts: Even so will I break this people, and this city, as one breaketh a potter's vessel, that cannot be made whole again; and they shall bury in Tophet, till there be no place to bury. Thus will I do unto this place, saith Jehovah, and to the inhabitants thereof, even making this city as Tophet: and the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah, which are defiled, shall be as the place of Tophet, even all the houses upon whose roofs they have burned incense unto all the host of heaven, and have poured out drink-offerings unto other gods.""Thou shalt break the bottle ..." (Jeremiah 19:10). What a perfect symbol of what would happen to Israel! "Not by accident, but by design it was broken. God intended it; man accomplished it; it was completely shattered; it was irresistibly effected; it was useless for Israel to resist; and no ingenuity could repair the damage."[20]Wiseman observed that "Because Jerusalem had made itself into a pagan altar, God made exactly that use out of them: (1) there was slaughter (Jeremiah 19:11); (2) burning (Jeremiah 19:12); and (3) offering up (Jeremiah 19:13)."[21]"Even all the houses upon whose roofs they have burned incense unto all the host of heaven ..." (Jeremiah 19:13) The destruction was destined to fall upon the city as a whole, and included in the destruction would be all of the houses upon the roofs of which the worship of pagan gods had been observed by the children of Israel. "The rooftops were apparently the normal places for the worship of astral deities such as Astarte. Cuneiform texts from Ras Shamra included a ritual to be used when offerings were made on rooftops to astral deities and celestial luminaries."[22]"In 2Kings 21:5,2 Kings 23:12, we learn that Ahaz and Manasseh introduced this

56

pagan cult in Judah, probably from Mesopotamia, where it was practiced from remote antiquity."[23]PETT, "Jeremiah 19:10“Then will you break the bottle in the sight of the men who go with you,”Having declared YHWH’s words concerning what is to happen to Judah Jeremiah is now called on to illustrate it by breaking the bottle which represents Judah in the Valley of Slaughter in front of the eyes of the elders of the people and of the priests. With our mind’s eye we can see him dramatically standing on the slope of the valley and then, in full view of the watchers, hurling the earthenware jar on to the ground, shattering it into many fragments. Many of them would have seen this as a prophetic action which was in their eyes a deliberate attempt to guarantee the occurrence of what he had prophesied. But this would not have been Jeremiah’s view. He already knew that it was going to happen. Breaking the vessel was simply to be seen from his viewpoint as an outward enactment of it so as to bring home the impact of what was going to happen.

11 and say to them, ‘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.

BARNES, "Made whole again - literally, “healed.” In this lies the distinction between this symbol and that of Jer_18:4. The plastic clay can be shaped and re-shaped until the potter forms with it the vessel he had predetermined: the broken bottle is of no further use, but its fragments are cast away forever upon the heaps of rubbish deposited in Tophet.

CLARKE, "Even so will I break this people and this city - The breaking of the bottle was the symbolical representation of the destruction of the city and of the state.

57

That cannot be made whole again - This seems to refer rather to the final destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, than to what was done by the Chaldeans. Jerusalem was healed after 70 years: but nearly 1800 years have elapsed since Jerusalem was taken and destroyed by the Romans; and it was then so broken, that it could not be made whole again.

GILL, "And shalt say unto them, thus saith the Lord of hosts,.... Of armies above and below; and so able to execute what he here threatens: even so will I break this people and this city: the people, the inhabitants of this city, and that itself, by the sword, famine, burning, and captivity: as one breaketh a potter's vessel, that cannot be made whole again; or "healed" (r); a potter's vessel, upon the wheel, such an one as the prophet had seen, and to which the Jews are compared, Jer_18:3; being marred, may be restored and put into another form and shape; but one that is dried and hardened, when broke, can never be put together again; so a vessel, of gold, silver, and brass, when broke, may be made whole again; but an earthen vessel never can; a fit emblem therefore this to represent utter and irrecoverable ruin; see Isa_30:14. Jerom here again observes, that this is clearly spoken, not of the Babylonish, but of the Roman captivity; after the former the city was rebuilt, and the people returned to Judea, and restored to former plenty; but since the latter, under Vespasian, Titus, and Hadrian, the ruins of Jerusalem remain, and will till the conversion of the Jews: and they shall bury them in Tophet, till there be no place to bury: where there should be such great numbers slain; or whither such multitudes of the slain should be brought out of the city to be buried there, that at length there would not be room enough to receive the dead into it; or, as the Syriac version renders it, "and in Tophet they shall bury, for want of a place to bury" in; in such a filthy, abominable, and accursed place shall their carcasses lie, where they were guilty of idolatry, and sacrificed their innocent babes, there being no other place to inter them in: an emblem this of their souls suffering in hell the vengeance of eternal fire.

JAMISON, "as one breaketh a potter’s vessel — expressing God’s absolute sovereignty (Jer_18:6; Psa_2:9; Isa_30:14, Margin; Lam_4:2; Rom_9:20, Rom_9:21).

cannot be made whole again — A broken potter’s vessel cannot be restored, but a new one may be made of the same material. So God raised a new Jewish seed, not identical with the destroyed rebels, but by substituting another generation in their stead [Grotius].no place to bury — (Jer_7:32).

CALVIN, "The Prophet again confirms what he had shewn by the external symbol, and he does this by a new coremtrod from God. We know that signs are wholly useless when the word of God does not shine forth, as we see that superstitious men

58

always practice many ceremonies, but they are only histrionic acts. But God never commanded his prophets to shew any sign without adding doctrine to it. This is what we see was done on this occasion; for Jeremiah spoke against impious superstitions, and as a celestial herald denounced punishment; he then sealed the prophecy by breaking the bottle, and a repetition of the doctrine follows again, Thus shalt thou say to them. This is not said of the Prophet’s companions, the pronoun is without an antecedent, but the whole reople are the persons referred to.Thus saith Jehovah, I will so break this people and this city. He mentions the city, in which they thought they had an impregnable fortress, because the temple of God was there. But as they had profaned the temple and polluted the city with their crimes, Jeremiah reminded them that no confidence or hope was to be placed in the city. Then he says, As one breaks a vessel which cannot be repaired, etc. Here again he shows that they were wholly to perish, so as no more to rise again. We indeed know that sometimes those who are most grievously afflicted retain some remnants of strength, and are at length restored to their former vigor; but the Prophet shews that the approaching calamity would be wholly irremediable. It is no objection to say, that God a. fterwards restored the people, and that the city and the temple were rebuilt, for all this was nothing to the ungodly men of that age, as their memory wholly perished. A curse and God’s vengeance remained on the heads of those who thus continued obstinate in their wickedness; and hence those who returned from exile are said in Psalms 102:19, to have been a people created again, as though they rose up as new men,“A people, who shall be created, shall praise the Lord.”He then says, Buried shall they be, in Tophet, for there will be no place elsewhere (220) They had chosen that place at a time when they thought that they had some evidence of God’s favor, and a cause for joy; but he declares that that place would be filled with dead bodies, for they would flee in great numbers into the city, which afterwards would become so full of dead bodies that no room for burial could be found except in Topher. It follows — TRAPP, "Jeremiah 19:11 And shalt say unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Even so will I break this people and this city, as [one] breaketh a potter’s vessel, that cannot be made whole again: and they shall bury [them] in Tophet, till [there be] no place to bury.Ver. 11. That cannot be made whole again.] Heb., Cured. No more was the Jewish state ever restored to its ancient dignity and lustre, after the captivity; neither was Tophet ever repaired at all, but served for a mortuary chapel, a place to lay dead men’s bones in.NISBET, "A BROKEN VESSEL‘A potter’s vessel, that cannot be made whole again.’

59

Jeremiah 19:11I. An earthen vessel is a true emblem of human life, so frail, so brittle.—But there is something frailer yet in our resolutions and efforts after holiness. And when once these have failed us, we can never be again what we were. Always the crack, the rivets, the mark of the join.II. In Gideon’s days there was a light within the earthen vessels, and when these were broken it shone forth.—There is, therefore, a breaking of the vessel which is salutary and desirable. And it is of this that Miss Taylor sings:—‘Oh to be nothing, nothing!Only to lie at His feet,A broken and emptied vessel,For the Master’s use made meet.Broken, that so unhinderedHis life through me might flow.’It reminds me of a piece of pottery I saw in the mountain burn, which was in the water and the water in it. If there be in any one of us a proud and evil disposition, a masterful self-will, which frets for its own way and makes itself strong against God, then indeed we may ask to be so broken as never to be whole again. ‘Take me—break me—make me!’ is a very wholesome prayer for us all.III. The apostle speaks of the heavenly treasure in the earthen vessel.—How wonderful it is that God should put so much of His spiritual ointment into such common and ordinary receptacles! No one detects what is in the saints till they are broken by sickness, pain, trouble; then the house is filled with the odour of the ointment.Illustration‘But Thou art making me, I thank Thee, sire,What Thou hast done and doest, Thou knowest well,And I will help Thee; gently in Thy fireI will be burning; on Thy potter’s wheel

60

I will whirl patient, tho’ my brain should reel;Thy grace shall be enough the grief to quell,And growing strength perfect through weakness dire.’PETT, "Jeremiah 19:11“And you will say to them, Thus says YHWH of hosts. Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter’s vessel, which cannot be made whole again, and they will bury in Topheth, until there is no place to bury.”And having broken the bottle Jeremiah was to declare in the Name of YHWH, that YHWH would do the same thing to ‘this people and this city’. He would break them as one breaks a potter’s earthenware vessel which cannot be made whole again, in other words the disaster would be permanent and not just temporary, at least for the near future. (And while the remnant might arise from the chaos, the bottle would never again be fully restored). The result of the disaster that was coming would be that burials would take place in Topheth of such magnitude that they would be unable to find places where they could bury all who had died. The number of the dead were probably intended to be seen in terms of the number of tiny pieces into which the vessel had shattered.

12 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.

CLARKE, "And even make this city as Tophet - A place of slaughter and destruction.

GILL, "Thus will I do unto this place, saith the Lord, and to the inhabitants thereof,.... To the city of Jerusalem and its inhabitants, as was done to the earthen bottle, and as before threatened:

61

and even, or also, make this city as Tophet; as full of slaughtered men and women as that had been of the blood of innocent children; and as filthy, abominable, and execrable a place as that; and to lose its name, as that is foretold it should, Jer_19:6; and as Jerusalem did, after the desolation of it by Hadrian, as Jerom observes; for what was built upon the spot afterwards was by the emperor called Aelia, after his own name.

JAMISON, "make this city as Tophet — that is, as defiled with dead bodies as Tophet.CALVIN, "As he had said before that the valley would be the place of slaughter, that thence it might take its name, so now he declares the same as to the city; “As then Tophet shall be the valley of slaughter, so shall Jerusalem be.” (221) They were no doubt kindled into rage (as we shall see in the next chapter) on hearing this prophecy; but yet God purposed, however irreclaimable and refractory they were, to let them know what was approaching, and though they did not believe the words of the Prophet, God touched and even deeply wounded their consciences, so that before the event came they were miserable. For the same purpose he adds —“Thus will I do to this place, saith Jehovah, and to its inhabitants, and that to make this city like Tophet.”The full sentence is, “and thus will I do to make,” etc. — Ed. PETT, "Jeremiah 19:12-13“Thus will I do to this place, the word of YHWH, and to its inhabitants, even making this city as Topheth, and the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah, which are defiled, will be as the place of Topheth, even all the houses on whose roofs they have burned incense to all the host of heaven, and have poured out drink-offerings to other gods.”Jeremiah then confirms in ‘the prophetic word of YHWH’ (neum YHWH) that what He had been saying about Topheth also applied Jerusalem itself, and to the houses in Jerusalem and to the kings’ houses. For they too were defiled as a result of the fact that on their flat roofs incense had been burned to all the host of Heaven (compare Zephaniah 1:5; 2 Kings 21:3; 2 Kings 23:12), and because there they had poured out drink-offerings to other gods (compare Jeremiah 7:18). Thus they would share in the judgment coming on Topheth.Cuneiform texts discovered at Ugarit contained instructions for offering sacrifices to astral gods on flat rooftops, and this erection of private altars on flat roof tops was apparently quite common. Strabo describes similar worship of the sun by the Nabataeans.

62

13 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.’”

BARNES, "Because of all - literally, “with reference to all,” limiting the denunciation to those houses whose roofs had been defiled with altars.

Upon whose roofs they have burned incense - See 2Ki_23:12, note.GILL, "And the houses of Jerusalem,.... Where the common people dwelt: and the houses of the kings of Judah; the palaces of the king, princes, and nobles of Judah, one as well as another: shall be defiled os Tophet; as that was defiled with the bodies and bones of the slain, and with the faith of the city brought unto it; so the houses of great and small, high and low, should be defiled with the carcasses of the slain that should lie unburied there; their houses should be their graves, and they buried in the ruins of them: or, "the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah, which are defiled" (s), with the idolatries after mentioned, shall be as Tophet, places of slaughter: because of all the houses upon whose roofs they have burnt incense to all the host of heaven; the roofs of houses with the Jews were built flat; and, as they sometimes used them for prayer to the God of heaven, as Peter did, Act_10:9; idolaters used them to burn incense on to the sun, moon, and stars; to which they were nearer, and of which they could have a clearer view upon the house tops, and therefore chose them for this purpose; and so common was this sort of idolatry, that it was practised upon most, if not all, the houses in Jerusalem; see Zep_1:5; and have poured out drink offerings unto other gods; besides the God of Israel; to Baal, and other Heathen deities.

JAMISON, "shall be defiled — with dead bodies (Jer_19:12; 2Ki_23:10).because of all the houses — Rather, (explanatory of the previous “the houses ...

63

and ... houses”), “even all the houses,” etc. [Calvin].roofs — being flat, they were used as high places for sacrifices to the sun and planets (Jer_32:29; 2Ki_23:11, 2Ki_23:12; Zep_1:5). The Nabateans, south and east of the Dead Sea, a nation most friendly to the Jews, according to Strabo, had the same usage.

CALVIN, "He describes, as I have said, more at large what he had briefly expressed, for he had spoken of the city; but as the belief of that was difficult, he now enumerates particulars, as though he had said, that Jerusalem was a wide city and splendidly built, for there were there many large and elegant houses, and the royal palaces, yet he says, that all these things would not prevent God to demolish the whole city. And this deserves particular notice, for we know that Satan dazzles our eyes whenever he suggests anything that gives a hope of defense, but what God threatens we think is vain, and as it were fabulous, or at least produces no effect on us. Since then so gross an hypocrisy prevailed in the hearts of the people, the Prophet rightly tried to shake off from them whatever might deceive them.Hence he says, The houses of Jerusalem, etc. — these were many and splendid — and the houses of the kings of Judah, their palaces either within or without the city shall be as the place of Tophet; that is, no house shall be exempt from slaughter, and no palace shall protect its inhabitants. They shall be unclean, he says, that is, on account of dead bodies, for men slain would be found everywhere; and this is, as it is well known, often mentioned in Scripture as a pollution or defilement. With regard to all the houses; some read, “On account of all the houses,” and ל lamed, is often a causal preposition. But it seems rather to be taken here as explanation; and hence I render the words, With regard to all the houses, so that the Prophet speaks of all the houses in, which they made incense. (222) As then there was no house free from sacrilege, he says that God’s vengeance would penetrate into all houses without any exception.He says also, On the roofs, with the view of condemning them for their effrontery; for they raised their baseness as a standard, that it might be seen at a distance. They indeed thought that God was delighted with such a service; but how came they to entertain such a foolish persuasion, except through their neglect and contempt of the law, and also through a mad presumption in giving more credit to their own fictions than to certain truth. The Prophet then justly condemns them, for they had cast off all shame, and went up to the roofs of their houses, that their doings might be more open. Then he mentions the whole host of heaven; and says further, that they had poured a libation to foreign gods. We see that many kinds of superstitions prevailed among the people; for he spoke of Baal in the singular number, he mentioned also Baalim, patrons, and he now adds, the whole host of heaven; that is, the sun, the moon, and all the stars.We hence see that the Jews kept no limits as to their sacrileges, which is usually the case with all the ungodly; for as soon as men begin to turn aside from the pure and

64

genuine worship of God, they sink into the lowest depths. It is then this wantonness that the Prophet now refers to, when he intimates that their various forms of worship were so increased, that they had devised as many gods as there are stars in heaven; which is similar to what is said elsewhere,“According to the number of thy cities, O Judah, are thy gods,”(Jeremiah 2:28; Jeremiah 11:13.)The words which follow are literally, — “which they have burned incense on their roofs,” which we properly render in our language, “on whose roofs they have burned incense;” but the Welsh is literally the Hebrew, Y rhai yr arogldarthasant ar eu pennau, — “which they incensed on their roofs;” but “incensed” in this sense is not used. — Ed. TRAPP, "Jeremiah 19:13 And the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah, shall be defiled as the place of Tophet, because of all the houses upon whose roofs they have burned incense unto all the host of heaven, and have poured out drink offerings unto other gods.Ver. 13. And the houses of Jerusalem.] Wherein they had their "chambers of imagery," and their private chapels for idolatrous uses, as Papists also have. [Ezekiel 8:12 Zephaniah 1:1-18]Because all the houses upon whose roofs.] See on Zephaniah 1:4.

14 Jeremiah then returned from Topheth, where the Lord had sent him to prophesy, and stood in the court of the Lord’s temple and said to all the people,

BARNES, "Since it was this repetition of the prophecy in the temple which so greatly irritated Pashur, these two verses ought to be joined to the next chapter.

CLARKE, "Then came Jeremiah from Tophet - He had probably gone to the 65

valley of Hinnom, and there repeated the discourse which he had a little before delivered to the chief priests and elders.

GILL, "Then came Jeremiah from Tophet,.... When he had broke his earthen bottle, and delivered his prophecy before the elders of the people and priests: or, "from that Tophet" (t), whither the Lord had sent him to prophesy; and whither he went and prophesied, according to his command; but now returned from thence, it being no doubt signified to him, in some manner or other, that it was the will of God he should; and he stood in the court of the Lord's house, and said to all the people; this was the court of the temple, called the outward court, or the court of the Israelites, where all the people met; for into other courts they might not enter; here the prophet placed himself, on purpose to deliver his prophecy to all the people; even the same as he had delivered at Tophet to the ancients of the people and the priests; but lest they should not faithfully represent it to the people, and that they might not be without it, he delivers it openly and publicly to them all, in the following words; which both declare their punishment, and the cause of it.

HENRY, "By a solemn recognition and ratification of what he had said in the court of the Lord's house, Jer_19:14, Jer_19:15. The prophet returned from Tophet to the temple, which stood upon the hill over that valley, and there confirmed, and probably repeated, what he had said in the valley of Tophet, for the benefit of those who had not heard it; what he had said he would stand to. Here, as often before, he both assures them of judgments coming upon them and assigns the cause of them, which was their sin. Both these are here put together in a little compass, with a reference to all that had gone before. 1. The accomplishment of the prophecies is here the judgment threatened. The people flattered themselves with a conceit that God would be better than his word, that the threatening was but to frighten them and keep them in awe a little; but the prophet tells them that they deceive themselves if they think so: For thus saith the Lord of hosts,who is able to make his words good, I will bring upon this city, and upon all her towns,all the smaller cities that belong to Jerusalem the metropolis, all the evil that I have pronounced against it. Note, Whatever men may think to the contrary, the executions of Providence will fully answer the predictions of the word, and God will appear as terrible against sin and sinners as the scripture makes him; nor shall the unbelief of men make either his promises or his threatenings of no effect or of less effect than they were thought to be of. 2. The contempt of the prophecies is here the sin charged upon them, as the procuring cause of this judgment. It is because they have hardened their necks,and would not bow and bend them to the yoke of God's commands, would not hear my words, that is, would not heed them and yield obedience to them. Note, The obstinacy of sinners in their sinful ways is altogether their own fault; if their necks are hardened, it is their own act and deed, they have hardened them; if they are deaf to the word of God, it is because they have stopped their own ears. We have need therefore to pray that God, by his grace, would deliver us from hardness of heart and contempt of his word and commandments.

66

JAMISON, "court of the Lord’s house — near Tophet; the largest court, under the open air, where was the greatest crowd (2Ch_20:5).

K&D 14-15, "The Prophet Jeremiah and the Temple-Warden Pashur. - Jer_19:14. When Jeremiah, having performed the divine command, returned from Tophet to the city, he went into the court of the house of God and spoke to the people assembled there, v. 15: "Thus hath said Jahveh of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I bring upon this city, and all its cities, all the evil that I have pronounced against it, because they stiffened their necks not to hear my words." "All the people" is the people present in the court of the temple as distinguished from the men who had accompanied Jeremiah into the valley of Benhinnom (Jer_19:10). מבי, the א having dropped off, as in Jer_39:16; 1Ki_21:21, 1Ki_21:29; 2Sa_5:2, and often. "All its cities" are the towns that belonged to Jerusalem, were subject to it (Jer_34:1); in other words, the cities of Judah, Jer_1:15; Jer_9:10, etc. All the evil that I have pronounced against it, not merely in the valley of Benhinnom (Jer_19:3-13), but generally up till this time, by the mouth of Jeremiah. If we limit the reference of this view to the prophecy in Tophet, we must assume, with Näg., that Jeremiah repeated the substance of it here; and besides, that prophecy is not in keeping with "all its cities," inasmuch as it (Jer_19:3-13) deals with Jerusalem alone. Apparently Jeremiah must have said more than is written in the verse, and described the evil somewhat more closely; so that the new matter spoken by him here consists in the "Behold I bring," etc., i.e., in his forewarning them of the speedy fulfilment of the threatenings against Jerusalem and Judah, as was the case with the prophecy in the valley of Benhinnom, which also, Jer_19:3, begins with הנני On "they stiffened .מביאtheir necks," etc., cf. Jer_17:23; Jer_7:26.

CALVIN, "Jeremiah had been led to the very place, when he foretold the punishment, which was nigh at hand, on account of the superstitions of Tophet or of the valley of Hinnom. That his doctrine might be more efficacious, God intended that he should preach before the very altar and in the very valley, then well known for ungodly and false modes of worship. He says now that he went to the Temple and delivered there the same message. We hence learn how great must have been the stupidity and indifference of the people, for the repetition of the prophecy was not unnecessary. For as God knew that the Jews were extremely tardy and slow, he caused them to be warned twice by his servant, and in two different places.Jeremiah, it is said, returned from Tophet, where God had sent him to prophesy; which last words were added, that we may not suppose that he without reason preached in the valley of Hinnom. God then commanded Jeremiah to denounce there, as it were in the very place, on the Jews their own destruction. And he stood, it is added, in the court of Jehovah’s house. As it was not lawful for the people to enter into the Temple, they usually assembled in the court, which was a part of the Temple. Then Jeremiah stood there; for he had to speak, not to a few, or in a corner, but to the whole people, and to make them witnesses of his prophecy. But we read

67

here nothing new; for, as it has been stated, he was bidden to declare twice the same thing — the approaching calamity; and he was so bidden, because the Jews were so hardened, that they could not easily be moved. That he connects other cities with Jerusalem is not to be wondered at; he thereby intimates, that the whole land was guilty before God, and that therefore desolation was near at hand, as to all the towns and cities; as though he had said, “God will not spare Jerusalem, though it has been hitherto his sanctuary; but as lesser cities are not innocent, they shall also feel the hand of God together with Jerusalem.” COFFMAN, ""Then came Jeremiah from Tophet, whither Jehovah had sent him to prophesy; and he stood in the court of Jehovah's house, and said to all the people: Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I will bring upon this city and upon all its towns all the evil that I have pronounced against it; because they have made their neck stiff, that they may not hear my words."This was probably only a summary of what Jeremiah said in the court of the temple, because Pashhur, the chief officer of the temple, was greatly irritated and angered by it, as comes to light in the next chapter. It was this connection between the two chapters that led Barnes to declare that, "These verses (Jeremiah 19:14-15) should have been joined to the next chapter."[24]TRAPP, "Jeremiah 19:14 Then came Jeremiah from Tophet, whither the LORD had sent him to prophesy; and he stood in the court of the LORD’S house; and said to all the people,Ver. 14. And he stood in the court of the Lord’s house.] A place of greatest concourse of people; and where he might meet with many hearers. Here he spread his net, that he might catch some souls; dilated his discourse at Tophet, whereof we have here but the short notes; minding them of their sin and punishment. And surely this prophet should be so much the more regarded by us, for that he so freely and fully delivered the divine messages, omitting no part thereof, either for fear or favour. Ambrose bade Augustine read the prophet Isaiah diligently, for the confirmation of his faith. We may all very profitably read the prophet Jeremiah, who is full of incitation to repentance and new obedience.PETT, "Jeremiah 19:14‘Then came Jeremiah from Topheth, where YHWH had sent him to prophesy, and he stood in the court of YHWH’s house, and said to all the people,’Having spoken YHWH’s words to the elders in the Valley of Hinnom Jeremiah majestically returned to the court of YHWH’s house (the Temple), and there he took his stand and spoke to all the people. His actions had probably taken place during a regular feast and there would therefore be large crowds gathered.

68

15 “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: ‘Listen! I am going to bring on this city and all the villages around it every disaster I pronounced against them, because they were stiff-necked and would not listen to my words.’”

BARNES, "Since it was this repetition of the prophecy in the temple which so greatly irritated Pashur, these two verses ought to be joined to the next chapter.

CLARKE, "Because they have hardened their necks - A metaphor taken from unruly and unbroken oxen, who resist the yoke, break and run away with their gears. So this people had broken and destroyed the yoke of the law.

GILL, "Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel,.... See Gill on Jer_19:3; behold, I will bring upon this city, and upon all her towns: the city of Jerusalem, and all the cities and towns near it, even all the cities and towns in Judea; of which Jerusalem was the metropolis, and therefore called hers: all the evil that I have pronounced against it; or decreed against it, as the Targum; all that he had purposed, and all that he had threatened, or spoke of by the Prophet Jeremiah, or any other of his prophets; for whatever he has said he will do, and whatsoever he has solved upon, and declared he will do, he assuredly brings to pass: because they have hardened their necks, that they might not hear my words; they turned their backs upon him, pulled away the shoulder, stopped their ears that they might not hear what was said by the prophets from the Lord; they neither inclined their ears to hearken to, nor bowed their necks to receive the yoke of his precepts; but, on the contrary, were, as was their general character, a stiffnecked people, and uncircumcised in heart and ears, obstinate and disobedient; and this was the cause of their ruin, by which it appeared to be just and righteous.

JAMISON, "her towns — the suburban villages and towns near Jerusalem, such as

69

Bethany.CALVIN, "The reason is subjoined, Because they have hardened their neck. He again confirms what we have before observed, — that they had fallen, not through ignorance, but through perverseness; for they had learned with sufficient clearness from the law what was right, and they had also been often warned by the prophets. Hence then their wickedness appeared and their untameable spirit, for they had heard the sound doctrine of the law, and had many to warn them.Now this passage teaches us that there is no pardon left for us, when we, as it were, avowedly reject the yoke of God. And this ought to be carefully noticed, for we see how difficult it is to subdue men, even when they confess that the word of God is what they hear. Since then there is in all mankind an innate perverseness, that hardly one in a hundred allows himself to be ruled by God’s word, it behoves us seriously to consider what is here said, — that they are unworthy of mercy who harden their neck. Hence it is said in Psalms 95:8,“Harden not your hearts like your fathers.”And a clearer definition follows, That they might not hear my words. Though there be hardness in all mortals, yet when the doctrine of salvation is made known and not received, then a greater impiety and pride shew themselves; for in that case, men hear God speaking, and yet rob him of his authority. It then follows, that the more clearly God makes known his truth, the less ground of excuse there is; for then especially comes to light the impiety of men, and their disdain seems incapable of being subdued. TRAPP, "Jeremiah 19:15 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will bring upon this city and upon all her towns all the evil that I have pronounced against it, because they have hardened their necks, that they might not hear my words.Ver. 15. Because they have hardened their necks.] Which may seem possessed with an iron sinew, so stiff they are and sturdy, having manum in aure, aurem in cervice, cervicem in corde, cor in obstinatione, (a) their hand on their ear, their ear in their neck, their neck in their heart, and their heart in obstinace, &c. PETT, "Jeremiah 19:15“Thus says YHWH of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I will bring on this city and on all its towns all the evil that I have pronounced against it, because they have made their neck stiff, that they may not hear my words.”Speaking ‘in the Name of YHWH of Hosts, the God of Israel’ he declared to all the people who were there what YHWH’s intentions were, and that was that He would

70

bring on Jerusalem and on all its towns all the evil that He had pronounced against them. And this was because they had so obstinately refused to hear what He had to say. A ‘stiff neck’ indicated deliberate obstinacy and unresponsiveness.

71