Babylon in Jeremiah 20

Jeremiah 19

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;

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,

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 G-d of Israel;

Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, the

which whosoever heareth, his ears shall tingle.

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;

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

10 Then shalt thou break the bottle in the sight

of the men that go with thee,

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.

12 Thus will I do unto this place, saith the

LORD, and to the inhabitants thereof, and even

make this city as Tophet:

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.

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,

15 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the G-d 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.

CHAPTER 20

1 Now Pashur the son of Immer the priest, who was

also chief governor in the house of the LORD,

heard that Jeremiah prophesied these things.

2 Then Pashur smote Jeremiah the prophet, and put

him in the stocks that were in the high gate of

Benjamin, which was by the house of the LORD.

3 And it came to pass on the morrow, that Pashur

brought forth Jeremiah out of the stocks. Then

said Jeremiah unto him, The LORD hath not called

thy name Pashur, but Magormissabib.

4 For thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will make

thee a terror to thyself, and to all thy friends:

and they shall fall by the sword of their

enemies, and thine eyes shall behold it: and I

will give all Judah into the hand of the king of

Babylon, and he shall carry them captive into

Babylon, and shall slay them with the sword.


Following the prophetic record of Isaiah, in

chronological order, is the record of Jeremiah.

Jeremiah had a few things to add about the

destiny of Babylon and the kingdom of man.

Isaiah was recorded during the years 740 B.C. to

681 B.C., as the record shows. Jeremiah's record

begins in about 605 B.C. and continues until

about 586 B.C., covering a timespan of about 140

years from the beginning of Isaiah's record until

the completion of Jeremiah's record. Let's say

that it covers about two complete seventy year

generations, which means that those who were

contemporaries of Isaiah were all departed when

Jeremiah arrived on the scene. From Hezekiah's

story, we can see that the entire nation barely

escaped being taken by the Assyrians, but it

appears that the long, slow decline of the nation

Israel was not reversed. The general population

was determined to cling to idolatry rather than

worship the G-d whose temple Solomon had built in

Jerusalem many years past. They gave in to the

seduction of the kingdom of man, and they missed

the greater and enduring glory of true worship.

In a general sense, idolatry is nothing more than

self-worship ... me, me, me. As the ancient

greeks put it, man is the measure of all things.

It seems that many still prefer this approach, as

short-sighted as it is. The prophets took a

longer term view of things, for one, because they

saw that the rule of law, G-d's Law, was a better

course to follow than the alternative, and that

the two are mutually exclusive. Life is that

way. Either it's one or the other. Nobody can

have it all. As this passage opens, Jeremiah is

directing people's attention to the valley of

Hinnom, where they had 'filled this place with

the blood of innocents'(v.4). And Isaiah thought

he had a tough bunch to reckon with.


Only a short distance away from the east gate,

and perhaps even in eyesight, the temple that

Solomon built still stood, but the worship of

Baal was conducted in the valley of Hinnom. It's

a symbolic representation of the depths of

depravity that folks are capable of once they

begin to venture down the path of idolatry.

There is no rational ending place down that path.

And we don't have to look to ancient history for

other illustrations of this phenomenon. As

recently as the past hundred years, the numbers

of people sacrificed on the altars of various

communist and fascist doctrines is too many to

accurately know. Then, there are all the rest of

the war casualties to add. I am by no means a

pacifist. Much of this destruction could have

been avoided, except that it is part and parcel

of the kingdom of man, and the lawlessness that

results from man's rejection of a higher order.

There, up the hill in Jerusalem, is the temple,

and in the temple is the holy of holies, and in

the holy of holies is the ark of the covenant,

and in the covenant it says, 'Thou shalt not

murder'.


Yeah. Jeremiah was none too thrilled about the

direction things were taking. But it wasn't him

that folks had to worry about, it was the

Occupant symbolized by the holy of holies that

wasn't going to change all the rules just to

satisfy the wayward activities of a few

renegades.


There's alot more here for tomorrow.