Bird's-eye view
In this chapter, the prophet Jeremiah is commanded by God to engage in a bit of prophetic street theater. This is not a message to be delivered from a pulpit, but rather a public object lesson, an enacted parable of judgment. The Lord instructs him to purchase a common clay jar, gather the civil and religious leaders of Jerusalem, and take them to the very scene of their most grotesque crimes, the Valley of Ben-hinnom. There, he is to proclaim a message of devastating calamity, a judgment so severe it would make the ears of those who heard it tingle. The indictment is specific: apostasy, idolatry, and the abomination of child sacrifice. The sentence is equally specific and graphically detailed: the place will be renamed the Valley of Slaughter, the nation's plans will be shattered, their bodies will be left unburied, their city will become a ruin, and they will descend into the horror of cannibalism under siege. This is a covenant lawsuit, and God is announcing the verdict and the execution of the sentence.
Outline
- 1. The Divine Commission for a Sign-Act (Jer 19:1-2)
- a. The Purchase of the Jar (v. 1a)
- b. The Assembling of the Witnesses (v. 1b)
- c. The Location of the Prophecy (v. 2)
- 2. The Proclamation of Judgment (Jer 19:3-9)
- a. The Announcement of Calamity (v. 3)
- b. The Indictment for Apostasy and Murder (vv. 4-5)
- c. The Sentence of Total Destruction (vv. 6-9)
- i. The Renaming of the Place (v. 6)
- ii. The Frustration of Counsel and Defeat in Battle (v. 7)
- iii. The Desolation of the City (v. 8)
- iv. The Horror of Cannibalism (v. 9)
Context In Jeremiah
Jeremiah 19 is a powerful culmination of the themes of judgment that have been building throughout the prophet's ministry. It follows chapters detailing Judah's spiritual adultery and unfaithfulness. This particular prophecy is not a warning in order to bring about repentance; the time for that has passed. This is a declaration of an irreversible sentence. The public nature of the act, performed before the elders, makes it an official and undeniable pronouncement. It is a formal serving of papers in God's covenant lawsuit against His people. The shattering of the jar in the subsequent verses (vv. 10-11) will provide the unforgettable exclamation point to this grim message. This is God, through His prophet, making it clear that the covenant curses, long-threatened, are now being implemented.
Key Issues
- Prophetic Sign-Acts
- The Valley of Ben-hinnom (Gehenna)
- The Abomination of Child Sacrifice
- The Nature of Covenant Curses
- The Sovereignty of God in Judgment
Verse-by-Verse Exposition
Verse 1: Thus says Yahweh, “Go and buy a potter’s earthenware jar, and take some of the elders of the people and some of the elders of the priests.
The word of the Lord comes with a specific and peculiar command. Jeremiah is to go buy a baqbuq, an earthenware flask. This is not some priceless vase from the king's treasury, but a common, cheap, and easily breakable piece of pottery. Its value is in what it contains, and once broken, it is worthless. The symbolism is potent from the outset. He is also to gather witnesses, and not just any witnesses. He is to bring the elders of the people and the priests, the very leadership responsible for the nation's spiritual and civil decay. This is not a message for the common man alone; it is a direct confrontation with the corrupt establishment. God is hauling the leadership into the divine courtroom.
Verse 2: Then go out to the valley of Ben-hinnom, which is by the entrance of the potsherd gate, and there call out the words that I tell you.
The location is not incidental; it is central to the indictment. The Valley of Ben-hinnom, south of Jerusalem, was the site of the most detestable practices of Judah. It was their national high place for child sacrifice. The entrance is the "potsherd gate," likely the gate through which the city's refuse, including broken pottery, was taken to the dump. So Jeremiah is to take a piece of pottery, with the leaders, to the place of their greatest sin, by the gate named for broken pottery. Every detail is saturated with meaning. God is rubbing their noses in their own filth before He pronounces judgment.
Verse 3: and say, ‘Hear the word of Yahweh, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, “Behold, I am about to bring a calamity upon this place, at which the ears of everyone that hears of it will tingle.”’
The message begins with a formal call to attention. This is for the kings, the plural indicating the whole royal line, and for everyone in the city. The authority is established: this is from Yahweh of hosts, the commander of heaven's armies, the God of Israel. This is the covenant God they have spurned. The coming judgment is described as a calamity that will make the ears "tingle." This is a biblical idiom for news so shocking and terrible that it creates a physical, ringing sensation (1 Sam. 3:11). This is not a slap on the wrist. This is a foundational, world-altering catastrophe.
Verse 4: Because they have forsaken Me and have made this a foreign place and have burned incense in it to other gods, that neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah had ever known, and because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent.
Here we have the grounds for the lawsuit, the list of high crimes. First, apostasy: "they have forsaken Me." All sin begins here, with turning away from the true and living God. Second, syncretism and idolatry: they made the holy city a "foreign place" by importing alien gods. These were not even the traditional idols of the region; they were new, fashionable gods their fathers had never known. This was not inherited ignorance but willful rebellion. Third, and culminating the charge, is murder: they "have filled this place with the blood of the innocent." Idolatry is never a victimless crime. False worship always leads to the degradation of man, and here it has led to the shedding of innocent blood.
Verse 5: and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, a thing which I never commanded or spoke of, nor did it ever come upon My heart.
The charge of shedding innocent blood is now specified in its most horrific form: the state-sanctioned, religious sacrifice of their own children. They built high places for Baal and burned their sons. This is the logical end of idolatry. When you worship a god you have created, that god will demand the ultimate sacrifice from you, because that god is a reflection of your own sinful heart. God's reaction is one of absolute revulsion. He distances Himself from this practice in the strongest possible terms. He never commanded it, never spoke of it, it never even entered His mind. This is a direct refutation of any demonic lie that would suggest Yahweh was anything like these bloodthirsty pagan deities. The God of Abraham is the God of life, not death.
Verse 6: therefore, behold, days are coming,” declares Yahweh, “when this place will no longer be called Topheth or the valley of Ben-hinnom, but rather the valley of Slaughter.
Because of these abominations, judgment is coming. The first act of judgment is a renaming. God is sovereign over names because He is sovereign over the reality they represent. Topheth, which may mean "place of burning," and the Valley of Ben-hinnom will now be known by a new name, one that reflects what God is about to do there: the Valley of Slaughter. The place where they slaughtered their children will become the place where God slaughters them.
Verse 7: I will empty out the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem to the point of destruction 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 I will give over their carcasses as food for the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth.
Here we find a divine pun. The Hebrew for "jar" is baqbuq, and the word for "empty out" is a form of baqaq. Just as a jar is emptied by being smashed, so God will empty out and smash the plans and strategies of Judah's leadership. Their political machinations and military defenses will be rendered utterly void. They will be given over to their enemies, and in the ultimate humiliation for an ancient person, their dead bodies will be left unburied, food for scavengers. This is a direct outworking of the covenant curses in Deuteronomy 28.
Verse 8: I will also make this city an object of horror and of hissing; everyone who passes by it will be horrified and hiss because of all its slaughtering.
The judgment extends from the people to the city itself. Jerusalem, the city of the great King, will become a ruin, a spectacle of divine wrath. Travelers will look upon the desolation and be horrified. They will "hiss," not in admiration, but in derision and shock. The glory of the city was tied to the presence of God, and once God was forsaken, the glory departed and only horror remained.
Verse 9: I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh in the siege and in the distress with which their enemies and those who seek their life will distress them.
This is the nadir of the curse. The judgment is grimly symmetrical. A people who sacrifice their children to false gods will, under the pressure of God's judgment, end up eating their children out of desperation. Sin is a cannibal. It devours everything. This is the final outworking of the covenant curses promised in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. It is the complete breakdown of all human society and natural affection. This is what happens when a nation forsakes God.
Application
We are tempted to read a passage like this and thank God that we are not like them. We don't burn our children on altars to Baal. But we must not be so hasty. Our society has its own forms of child sacrifice, performed in sterile clinics under the banner of "choice." We have forsaken God for the idols of self, autonomy, and convenience. And the blood of the innocent cries out from our land as surely as it did from the Valley of Ben-hinnom.
The principle remains: covenant breaking has consequences. When a people, and especially the people of God, abandon His law and His worship, the unraveling of their society is not far behind. The curses described here, social breakdown, military defeat, economic collapse, and the loss of all that is humane, are the natural and judicial consequences of turning from the living God.
But the broken jar points us to another brokenness. This judgment is a foreshadowing of the ultimate judgment that all sin deserves. The good news of the gospel is that God sent His own Son, not to be a sacrifice to a demonic idol, but to be a sacrifice for our sin. On the cross, Jesus Christ endured the full measure of the curse. He was broken so that we might be made whole. He bore the slaughter so that we might be brought into the valley of peace. The only escape from the Valley of Slaughter is to flee to the cross of the one who was slaughtered for us.