Valley of Slaughter

Valley Of Slaughter

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.


Here's a quote from Easton's Bible Dictionary:

"East gate
(Jeremiah 19:2), properly the Potter's gate, the

gate which led to the potter's field, in the

valley of Hinnom.

Gehenna
(originally Ge bene Hinnom; i.e., "the valley of

the sons of Hinnom"), a deep, narrow glen to the

south of Jerusalem, where the idolatrous Jews

offered their children in sacrifice to Molech (2

Chronicles 28:3; 33:6; Jeremiah 7:31; 19:2-6).

This valley afterwards became the common

receptacle for all the refuse of the city. Here

the dead bodies of animals and of criminals, and

all kinds of filth, were cast and consumed by

fire kept always burning. It thus in process of

time became the image of the place of everlasting

destruction. In this sense it is used by our Lord

in Matthew 5:22,29,30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15,33;

Mark 9:43,45,47; Luke 12:5. In these passages,

and also in James 3:6, the word is uniformly

rendered "hell," the Revised Version placing

"Gehenna" in the margin. (See HELL; HINNOM .)"


Jeremiah was making a dramatic statement in the

passage above. It seems that time had run out

for the people of Jerusalem to ammend their ways.

They had brought upon themselves the

consequences of their rebellious behavior. To

me, it's not as mysterious and complicated as it

might seem. For some time the people had been

performing ritual human sacrifice to the idols of

Canaan, as well as the gamut of other rituals of

idol worship that were the practice of the pagan

populations that surrounded them. The people of

Jerusalem had rejected the worship of G-d, and

fully assimilated the surrounding cultural

practices. Hmmm. Does this sound familiar?

Except for a faithful remnant, there was no

longer any interest in the law of Moses, and the

temple that Solomon had built in Jerusalem, for

the glory of G-d. Even after the years of

warning and persuasion by the message of Isaiah.

Time had come for a dramatic conclusion.

Jeremiah was the lucky guy chosen to get this

final message of judgement out to the masses.


What else was there to do? It's not as if there

was just a nominal observance of ancient

tradition. The entire covenant had been rejected

and pagan practices fully embraced. There was

nothing about the Jerusalem of Jeremiah's time

that represented the kingdom of heaven.

'Gehenna' was the place that symbolized the

situation in Jerusalem. Jesus used it in his day

as a symbol to illustrate the place of eternal

darkness and separation from G-d, in other places

referred to as the 'lake of fire'. Jeremiah was

telling the people that they were all going to

hell. True, yes. But not a well received

message, then as now. He was simply letting them

know that time had run out.


The fulfillment of this prophecy was complete in

the year 586 B.C. and repeated again, with the

destruction of Herod's Temple in 70 A.D. There

has been no temple, in Jerusalem, since then.


To bring the message up to date, there is a point

at which actions invite consequences. Jerusalem

was built to symbolically represent the kingdom

of heaven. When it no longer serves that

purpose, it has no purpose. It is better left in

ruins to symbolize man's rejection of the kingdom

of heaven. In modern times, since the

resurrection, it is the church that represents

the kingdom of heaven, until the time of the

Gentiles has been fulfilled. Time is always

running in sync with the prophetic clock.

And it's my guess that time is growing short for

the church. once it decided to reject the

prophetic message of scripture, the countdown

began. As it's recorded in the book of the

Revelation, it once again will be Babylon (the

kingdom of man) that will render itself useful in

the destruction of what remains of the church.

All in all, not a bad thing. Just the expected

course of events. Of course, it's like Woody

Allen once said, It's not that I'm afraid of

dying, I just don't want to be there when it

happens. I agree with Woody on this. I'm not

afraid of what's headed our way, I just don't

want to be there when it happens.


You can see that modern idolatry is cloaked in

fashionable high-tech ritual. We want to have it

our way, and that's what we get. There is no

temple, providing a dramatic backdrop to our

self-centered activities down in the valley of

Hinnom. But correctional facilities are bursting

at the seams, family courts are beehives of

activity and other trends seem to indicate a

general decline in the quality of modern

civilization. Metrics tell part of the story,

but as you consider the influence of the modern

church, what do you see? Are they on the right

track? Unless we have done the job of

representing the truth about the kingdom of

heaven, we are only engaged in another form of

high-tech ritual.


Oh, by the way. The temple (symbolically if not

literally) and all that it represents still

exists, in its perfection, and nothing about it

has ever changed. We just can't see it from

where we're at. We reside in the kingdom of man

and the temple resides in the kingdom of heaven.

Its time will come, probably sooner than most

think.


What we can see from where we're at is that the

message of Jeremiah is a timeless message, and

it's not going to end well for those who insist

upon rejecting the worship of G-d. There will

come a day when the rebellion will be quenched.

It's best not to mistake G-d's patience for an

inability to act, and the prophetic time clock is

ticking.