The Book of Jeremiah

Hebrew Study

Explanation

God gives Jeremiah another acted sign, and this one is grim. He is to buy "a potter's earthen bottle", a hardened, fired flask, and take with him "the ancients of the people, and of the ancients of the priests" as official witnesses. They go to "the valley of the son of Hinnom," the ravine outside Jerusalem where the people had burned their children to false gods. There Jeremiah announces judgment so terrible that "whosoever heareth, his ears shall tingle." The reasons are stated with mounting horror. They "have forsaken me," worshiped "other gods," and "filled this place with the blood of innocents." Worst of all, "they have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal." And God recoils from it with the same words He used in chapter 7: this abomination is something "which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind." Child sacrifice was so utterly foreign to God's heart that the thought never even arose in Him. It was pure human wickedness, falsely dressed as devotion. God utterly disowns it.

Gospel Focus

The phrase "which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind" is a vital word about the character of God. The horror of child sacrifice, and every atrocity committed in the name of religion, "came... not into my mind." God is not the author of the evil that people do in His name; such wickedness is invented by the human heart and utterly disowned by Him. Never charge God with the cruelty men commit while claiming His authority. And the mention of "the blood of innocents" points, by dark contrast, to the gospel. Where these fathers shed the blood of their innocent children to false gods, God the Father gave His own innocent Son, and where Baal's altars demanded children be burned, the true God provided Himself the sacrifice, "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son" (John 3:16). The blood of innocents that defiled the valley is answered by the blood of the truly Innocent One that cleanses, "the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel" (Hebrews 12:24). The valley of Hinnom, source of the word Gehenna, is the fate Christ died to save us from. Flee the false gods that devour; come to the God who gave His Son for you.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

God pronounces the sentence. The valley will get a new name that matches its new reality: "this place shall no more be called Tophet, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom, but The valley of slaughter." The very place where they slaughtered their children in sacrifice would become the place of their own slaughter. God will "make void the counsel of Judah", frustrate every plan they devised for their own security, a fitting judgment on a people who trusted their own schemes instead of Him. They will "fall by the sword," their bodies left unburied "to be meat for the fowls." The city will become "desolate, and an hissing," an object of horror to all who pass. And the siege will be so extreme that it produces the most terrible horror of all: "I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters." The very people who burned their children to idols would, in the desperation of the siege, be reduced to unthinkable acts. This was the covenant curse foretold long before (Deuteronomy 28:53). Sin's harvest, fully grown, is a horror that recoils upon the sinner.

Gospel Focus

The renaming of the valley, from the place where they slaughtered their children to the place of their own slaughter, reveals a sober principle of God's justice: sin has a way of recoiling upon the sinner. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap" (Galatians 6:7); "his mischief shall return upon his own head" (Psalm 7:16). The valley of Hinnom became so associated with fire and horror that its name, Gehenna, became the New Testament word for hell, "the fire that never shall be quenched" (Mark 9:43). This is what sin, left to run its full course, finally produces. But the same God who lets sin reap its harvest is the God who intervened to bear that harvest Himself. The judgment Judah's sin deserved is a picture of the judgment we all deserve; and the gospel is that Jesus entered our "valley of slaughter," bearing the curse and the fire so that we need never enter it. He was "made a curse for us" (Galatians 3:13), taking upon Himself the covenant curses so that we might receive the covenant blessings. Do not sow to a harvest that recoils in horror. The valley of slaughter has an escape, and His name is Jesus, who bore the slaughter in our place.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

Now comes the climactic act. "Then shalt thou break the bottle in the sight of the men that go with thee." Jeremiah smashes the hardened flask to pieces, and declares its meaning: "Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaketh a potter's vessel, that cannot be made whole again." This is the deliberate counterpart to chapter 18. There, the marred clay was still soft and could be "made again another vessel"; here, the fired bottle, once shattered, "cannot be made whole again." Judah had passed from the soft, reshapeable clay to the hardened, brittle vessel; there was a repentance still available in chapter 18 that, refused, gives way to the irreparable breaking of chapter 19. So thorough will the ruin be that they will bury the dead in Tophet "till there be no place to bury," and the whole city, even the royal houses, will be as defiled as that valley of horror. Then Jeremiah leaves Tophet and goes to "the court of the LORD'S house", the temple itself, to proclaim the judgment publicly. And he names the cause in one phrase: "because they have hardened their necks, that they might not hear my words." The breaking came not because God was unwilling to remake them, but because they hardened themselves past hearing.

Gospel Focus

The two signs of chapters 18 and 19, read together, give a searching gospel warning. As long as the clay is soft, the Potter can remake even a marred vessel, "he made it again another vessel." But there is a point at which a heart, by persistent refusal, becomes like fired pottery, "hardened," so that only breaking remains, "that cannot be made whole again." This is the terror of a hardening heart. Scripture warns urgently against it: "To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts" (Hebrews 3:15), and "exhort one another daily... lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin" (Hebrews 3:13). Sin lies to us that there is always more time, that we can turn later, while all the while it is baking the clay hard. Pharaoh hardened his heart until God confirmed him in it; so did Judah, whose "necks" were "hardened, that they might not hear." The good news is that today the clay may still be soft, the door of repentance still open. Do not presume on tomorrow. While your heart can still be moved, yield to the Potter, hear His voice, and be remade, before the soft clay becomes the shattered bottle that cannot be made whole again.