Jeremiah 19
15 verses
Jeremiah purchases a clay jar and, accompanied by elders and priests, travels to the Hinnom Valley where he smashes the vessel while announcing that YHWH will break Jerusalem and the people of Judah as this pot is broken beyond repair, introducing imagery of the valley as a place of judgment and death where the people will consume their own children due to siege famine. The prophet condemns the people for burning their children as offerings to Baal and filling the valley with innocent blood through child sacrifice, practices that represent the ultimate covenant violation and moral abomination that necessitate comprehensive judgment and destruction. The sign-act of the broken pot is more violent than the earlier loincloth, suggesting escalating urgency of the judgment message as YHWH's patience is exhausted, while the priest's assault on Jeremiah and imprisonment that follows demonstrates how prophetic truth-telling generates institutional resistance and physical persecution. This chapter marks a turning point in Jeremiah's ministry: judgment has become so imminent and comprehensive that sign-acts must shift from symbolic marring to complete destruction, and the prophet's own suffering intensifies as the institutional church and civil authorities recognize his message as an existential threat to their power and status.
VERSES IN THIS CHAPTER
1
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;
0 0Open verse page →
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,
0 0Open verse page →
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.
0 0Open verse page →
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;
0 0Open verse page →
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:
0 0Open verse page →
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.
0 0Open verse page →
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.
0 0Open verse page →
8
And I will make this city desolate, and an hissing; every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished and hiss because of all the plagues thereof.
0 0Open verse page →
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.
0 0Open verse page →
10
Then shalt thou break the bottle in the sight of the men that go with thee,
0 0Open verse page →
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.
0 0Open verse page →
12
Thus will I do unto this place, saith the Lord, and to the inhabitants thereof, and even make this city as Tophet:
0 0Open verse page →
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.
0 0Open verse page →
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,
0 0Open verse page →
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.
0 0Open verse page →
COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS
No notes on this chapter yet. Be the first to write one!