Jeremiah 7 King James Version (KJV)
7 The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying,
2 Stand in the gate of the Lord‘s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all ye of Judah, that enter in at these gates to worship the Lord.
3 Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place.
4 Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, are these.
5 For if ye throughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye throughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbour;
6 If ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your hurt:
7 Then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, for ever and ever.
8 Behold, ye trust in lying words, that cannot profit.
9 Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods whom ye know not;
10 And come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, We are delivered to do all these abominations?
11 Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, even I have seen it, saith the Lord.
12 But go ye now unto my place which was in Shiloh, where I set my name at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel.
13 And now, because ye have done all these works, saith the Lord, and I spake unto you, rising up early and speaking, but ye heard not; and I called you, but ye answered not;
14 Therefore will I do unto this house, which is called by my name, wherein ye trust, and unto the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I have done to Shiloh.
15 And I will cast you out of my sight, as I have cast out all your brethren, even the whole seed of Ephraim.
16 Therefore pray not thou for this people, neither lift up cry nor prayer for them, neither make intercession to me: for I will not hear thee.
17 Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?
18 The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.
19 Do they provoke me to anger? saith the Lord: do they not provoke themselves to the confusion of their own faces?
20 Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Behold, mine anger and my fury shall be poured out upon this place, upon man, and upon beast, and upon the trees of the field, and upon the fruit of the ground; and it shall burn, and shall not be quenched.
21 Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Put your burnt offerings unto your sacrifices, and eat flesh.
22 For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices:
23 But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people: and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you.
24 But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward.
25 Since the day that your fathers came forth out of the land of Egypt unto this day I have even sent unto you all my servants the prophets, daily rising up early and sending them:
26 Yet they hearkened not unto me, nor inclined their ear, but hardened their neck: they did worse than their fathers.
27 Therefore thou shalt speak all these words unto them; but they will not hearken to thee: thou shalt also call unto them; but they will not answer thee.
28 But thou shalt say unto them, This is a nation that obeyeth not the voice of the Lord their God, nor receiveth correction: truth is perished, and is cut off from their mouth.
29 Cut off thine hair, O Jerusalem, and cast it away, and take up a lamentation on high places; for the Lord hath rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath.
30 For the children of Judah have done evil in my sight, saith the Lord: they have set their abominations in the house which is called by my name, to pollute it.
31 And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart.
32 Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be called Tophet, nor the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter: for they shall bury in Tophet, till there be no place.
33 And the carcases of this people shall be meat for the fowls of the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth; and none shall fray them away.
34 Then will I cause to cease from the cities of Judah, and from the streets of Jerusalem, the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride: for the land shall be desolate.
Commentary
7:1-20:18 THE SPIRITUAL CONDITION OF JUDAH
Jeremiah at the temple (7:1-15)
This message seems to belong to the period of religious decline that followed the death of Josiah. Though Josiah had done well to restore the temple, the people developed a wrong, even superstitious, attitude towards it. They felt that it was sacred, that it belonged to God, and that therefore he would not allow any enemy to destroy it. They thought that the presence of the temple in Jerusalem guaranteed the city against capture by the enemy. God now tells Jeremiah to stand outside the temple and announce to the people that in thinking this way they are deceiving themselves. Only by changing their ways and replacing injustice with godliness will they save their temple, their city and their nation from certain destruction (7:1-7).
Jeremiah points out the stupidity of the people in thinking they can do as they wish and still expect God to save them. They are immoral, dishonest, violent and idolatrous, yet they think they are safe because they offer sacrifices in his temple (8-11). Shiloh was once the religious centre of the nation, the place where the tabernacle was set up; but God allowed Shiloh and the tabernacle to be invaded and smashed because of the people’s wickedness. For the same reason he will now allow Jerusalem and its temple to be destroyed (12-15; cf. Josh 18:1; 1 Sam 1:3; Ps 78:60).
No hope for an idolatrous people (7:16-8:3)
God now tells Jeremiah that it is useless for him to persist in praying for the safety of the Judeans. They have so given themselves to idolatrous practices that nothing can save them from God’s judgment. Throughout the cities and towns of Judah people worship foreign gods, but in the process they harm themselves (16-19). The harm will be much greater when God’s judgment falls on them (20).
While openly worshipping heathen gods, the people also offer sacrifices to Yahweh. The offering of sacrifices was part of the religious system God gave to Israel through Moses, but the first thing God demanded of his people was always obedience (21-23). Israel’s history shows that sacrifices will never save a stubborn and disobedient people from punishment (24-26).
Most of the people will ignore the prophet’s warnings, but he must persist in announcing God’s message (27-28). Jeremiah tells the people to shave off their hair as a sign of mourning for the death that is soon to overtake their nation (29). They have brought idolatrous practices into God’s temple, and just outside Jerusalem they have established a site for the heathen practice of sacrificing children to the god Molech (30-31). But the place where they have slaughtered their children will become a dump for their own corpses. There they will rot in the sun and be eaten by foul birds (32-34; cf. 2 Kings 21:6; 23:10).
Not satisfied with butchering the helpless people, the invaders will do all they can to heap disgrace upon Judah. They will even drag out the bones of the nation’s honoured dead from their tombs and scatter them like garbage on the ground. But such disgrace is preferable to the horror that will be experienced by people who live through those days (8:1-3).
Tophet and the Valley of Hinnom
The place where the Judeans offered their children as burnt sacrifices was the Valley of Ben Hinnom, on the southern side of the city. The valley got its name from the son of Hinnom (the Hebrew ben meaning ‘son’) who at one time probably owned the land that stretched along the valley. The name Tophet seems to have meant ‘place of burning’ and was used originally in relation to the place in the Valley of Hinnom where people burnt their children as sacrifices. This was also the place where people from Jerusalem dumped broken pottery (see 19:1-2). In time it became a public garbage dump and fires burnt there continually.
When transliterated from Hebrew to Greek, ‘Valley of Hinnom’ (Hebrew: ge-hinnom) becomes gehenna. This was the word that Jesus used for the place of final punishment of the wicked, and is commonly translated ‘hell’ (Matt 10:28; 18:9; 23:33). The Valley of Hinnom was associated with judgment and burning (see 7:31-32; 19:4-7), and therefore gehenna became a fitting word to denote the place or state of eternal punishment (Mark 9:43-48; cf Matt 18:8-9; Rev 20:10,15).