Jeremiah 7

7 : 1, 2 THE word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying, 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. 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. Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, are these. For if ye thoroughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye thoroughly execute judgement between a man and his neighbour; 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 own hurt: then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, from of old even for evermore. Behold, ye trust in lying words, that cannot profit. Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods whom ye have not known, and come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, We are delivered; that ye may do all these abominations? Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I, even I, have seen it, saith the LORD. But go ye now unto my place which was in Shiloh, where I caused my name to dwell at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel. 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: therefore will I do unto the 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. And I will cast you out of my sight, as I have cast out all your brethren, even the whole seed of Ephraim. 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. Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the 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. Do they provoke me to anger? saith the LORD; do they not provoke themselves, to the confusion of their own faces? 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. Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Add your burnt offerings unto your sacrifices, and eat ye flesh. 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: but this thing I commanded them, saying, Hearken unto my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people: and walk ye in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you. But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in their own counsels and in the stubbornness of their evil heart, and went backward and not forward. Since the day that your fathers came forth out of the land of Egypt unto this day, I have sent unto you all my servants the prophets, daily rising up early and sending them: yet they hearkened not unto me, nor inclined their ear, but made their neck stiff: they did worse than their fathers. And 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. And thou shalt say unto them, This is the nation that hath not hearkened to the voice of the LORD their God, nor received instruction: truth is perished, and is cut off from their mouth. Cut off thine hair, O Jerusalem, and cast it away, and take up a lamentation on the bare heights; for the LORD hath rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath. For the children of Judah have done that which is evil in my sight, saith the LORD: they have set their abominations in the house which is called by my name, to defile it. And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and

32 their daughters in the fire; which I commanded not, neither came it into my mind. There fore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that it shall no more be called Topheth, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom, but The valley of Slaughter: for they shall bury in Topheth, till 33 there be no place to bury. And the carcasses of this people shall be meat for the fowls of the 34 heaven, and for the beasts of the earth; and none shall fray them away. 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 become a waste.

8:1 At that time, saith the LORD, they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah, and the bones of his princes, and the bones of the priests, and the bones of the prophets, and 2 the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves: and they shall spread them before the sun, and the moon, and all the host of heaven, whom they have loved, and whom they have served, and after whom they have walked, and whom they have sought, and whom they have worshipped: they shall not be gathered, nor be buried; they shall be for 3 dung upon the face of the earth. And death shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue that remain of this evil family, which remain in all the places whither I have driven them, saith the LORD of hosts.

4. Moreover thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the LORD: Shall men fall, and not rise up 5 again? shall one turn away, and not return? Why then is this people of Jerusalem slidden 6 back by a perpetual backsliding? they hold fast deceit, they refuse to return. I hearkened and heard, but they spake not aright: no man repenteth him of his wickedness, saying, What have I done? every one turneth to his course, as a horse that rusheth headlong in the 7 battle. Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the swallow and the crane observe the time of their coming; but my people know not the ordi- 8 nance of the LORD. How do ye say, We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us? But, 9 behold, the false pen of the scribes hath wrought falsely. The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken: lo, they have rejected the word of the LORD; and what manner of 10 wisdom is in them? Therefore will I give their wives unto others, and their fields to them that shall possess them: for every one from the least even unto the greatest is given to covet- 11 ousness, from the prophet even unto the priest every one deaeth falsely. And they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people lightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no 12 peace. Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore shall they fall among them that fall: in 13 the time of their visitation they shall be cast down, saith the LORD. I will utterly consume them, saith the LORD: there shall be no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree, and the 14 leaf shall fade; and the things that I have given them shall pass away from them. Why do we sit still? assemble yourselves, and let us enter into the defenced cities, and let us be silent there: for the LORD our God hath put us to silence, and given us water of gall to drink, be- 15 cause we have sinned against the LORD. We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a 16 time of healing, and behold dismay! The snorting of his horses is heard from Dan: at the sound of the neighing of his strong ones the whole land trembleth; for they are come, and 17 have devoured the land and all that is in it; the city and those that dwell therein. For, behold, I will send serpents, basilisks, among you, which will not be charmed; and they shall bite you, saith the LORD.

18,19. Oh that I could comfort myself against sorrow! my heart is faint within me. Behold, the voice of the cry of the daughter of my people from a land that is very far off: Is not the LORD in Zion? is not her King in her? Why have they provoked me to anger with their 20 graven images, and with strange vanities? The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and 21 we are not saved. For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt: I am black; 22 astonishment hath taken hold on me. Is there no balm in Gilead? is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?

9:1 Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep 2 day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them! for they 3 be all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men. And they bend their tongue as it were their bow for falsehood; and they are grown strong in the land, but not for truth: for they 4 proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith the LORD. Take ye heed every one of his neighbour, and trust ye not in any brother : for every brother will utterly supplant, 5 and every neighbour will go about with slanders. And they will deceive every one his neighbour, and will not speak the truth : they have taught their tongue to speak lies ; they 6 weary themselves to commit iniquity. Thine habitation is in the midst of deceit ; through deceit they refuse to know me, saith the LORD. 7 Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, Behold, I will melt them, and try them ; for how 8 else should I do, because of the daughter of my people ? Their tongue is a deadly arrow ; it speaketh deceit : one speaketh peaceably to his neighbour with his mouth, but in his heart 9 he layeth wait for him. Shall I not visit them for these things ? saith the LORD : shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this ? 10 For the mountains will I take up a weeping and wailing, and for the pastures of the wil- derness a lamentation, because they are burned up, so that none passeth through ; neither can men hear the voice of the cattle ; both the fowl of the heavens and the beast are fled, 11 they are gone. And I will make Jerusalem heaps, a dwelling place of jackals ; and I will 12 make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant. Who is the wise man, that may understand this ? and who is he to whom the mouth of the LORD hath spoken, that he may declare it ? wherefore is the land perished and burned up like a wilderness, so that none passeth through ? 13 And the LORD saith, Because they have forsaken my law which I set before them, and 14 have not obeyed my voice, neither walked therein ; but have walked after the stubborn- 15 ness of their own heart, and after the Baalim, which their fathers taught them : therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I will feed them, even this people, 13 with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink. I will scatter them also among the nations, whom neither they nor their fathers have known : and I will send the sword after them, till I have consumed them. 17 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Consider ye, and call for the mourning women, that they 18 may come ; and send for the cunning women, that they may come ; and let them make haste, and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush 19 out with waters. For a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion, How are we spoiled ! we are greatly confounded, because we have forsaken the land, because they have cast down our 20 dwellings. Yet hear the word of the LORD, O ye women, and let your ear receive the word of his mouth, and teach your daughters wailing, and every one her neighbour lamentation. 21 For death is come up into our windows, it is entered into our palaces ; to cut off the children 22 from without, and the young men from the streets. Speak, Thus saith the LORD, The car- cases of men shall fall as dung upon the open field, and as the handful after the harvestman, and none shall gather them. 23 Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches : but let him that glorieth 24 glory in this, that he understandeth, and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgement, and righteousness, in the earth : for in these things I delight, 25 saith the LORD. Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will punish all them which 26 are circumcised in their uncircumcision ; Egypt, and Judah, and Edom, and the children of Ammon, and Moab, and all that have the corners of their hair polled that dwell in the wilder- ness : for all the nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart.

Chaps. 7, 8, 9. These chapters manifestly constitute one message. Not only is there no evidence of closing one message and beginning another throughout this portion, but the same subject continues on through the entire pas- sage. But it appears here without date. Yet a clew to its date is found in the evidence of identity as to circumstances and time between this message and that which commences in chap. 26. This evidence of identity as to circumstances and time lies in the following par- ticulars : 1. In each message the prophet was directed to go and stand in the Temple and de- liver it to the people who congregated—going out and coming in—there. (See 7 : 2 and 26 : 2.) 2. One of the salient points in each message, the one which manifestly attracted most atten- tion, was God’s threatening to make this Tem- ple like Shiloh—i.e., to destroy it utterly. (Cf. 7 : 14 with 26 : 6.) 3. The burden of the exhortation and the only condition of sparing the Temple, city and people, is in each the same—“amend your ways and your doings.” (See 7:3-7 with 26:13.) This mention (chap. 26) gives us the date—viz., “in the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim.” H. C.

Chap. 7. Besides the prophets, who were commissioned to announce the approaching calamities of Judah and Jerusalem, there were others who took on themselves to flatter the people with opposite predictions. They taught them to look upon such threats as groundless, since God, they said, would have too much regard for His own honor to suffer His Temple to be profaned, and the seat of His holiness given up into the hand of strangers. Jeremiah is commanded openly to reprove the falsehood of these assertions, and to show, by an example in point, that the sanctity of the place would afford no security for the guilty; but that God would assuredly do by His house at Jerusalem what He had done unto Shiloh, and cast the people of Judah out of His sight, as He had already cast off the people of Israel for their wickedness (verses 1-16). God justifies the severity of these proceedings by a representation of the people’s impiety (verses 17-20). The prophet declares their sacrifices to be of no acceptance while they continue deaf to the calls of God’s messengers (verses 21-28). He specifies the gross idolatries with which they were defiled, and pronounces a heavy sentence of Divine vengeance both on the dead and on the living (verses 29-34). Blayney.

4. They that slight the words of truth, which would profit them, take shelter in words of falsehood, which cannot profit them. Now these lying words were, “The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, are these. These buildings, the courts, the holy place, and the holy of holies, are the Temple of the Lord, built by His appointment, to His glory; here He resides, here He is worshipped, here we meet three times a year to pay our homage to Him as our King in His palace.” This they thought was security enough to them to keep God and His favors from leaving them, God and His judgments from breaking in upon them. The prophet repeats it because they repeated it upon all occasions. It was the cant of the times, it was in their mouths upon all occasions. The privileges of a form of godliness are often the pride and confidence of those that are strangers and enemies to the power of it. It is common for those that are furthest from God to boast themselves most of their being near to the Church. H.

Under a vivid picture of a scene at the door of the old Temple, the prophet searches out a moral danger that is apt to accompany all public religious observances. Standing at the gate he sees a multitude of men crowding in to go through the forms of worship. He knows that they have just come from the selfish practice, in their markets, fields, streets and houses, of injustice, cruelty to the weak, overreaching “the stranger, the fatherless and the widow,” of every kind of social, commercial, political and ecclesiastical falsehood, for he goes on to specify all these; and what is a great deal worse, that they are privately intending to go back to the same kinds of meanness and outrage after the prayers and sacrifices are over. He also sees that the moment their want of integrity is pointed out, they will, after the Pharisaic fashion, undertake to throw over it the screen of a religious profession. They will answer, at every rebuke of their immorality, “The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord,” as if they would make up, by the threefold repetition and noise of their zeal, for their hollow-heartedness. And so, having it for his business as a prophet of God to denounce such corruption everywhere, without apology for his Divine commission, without arguing the matter, without any roundabout or imbecile phraseology, he goes to the point at once, and begins, “Trust ye not in lying words; amend your ways and your doings.” The great instructive fact on which attention is to be fixed is this: that out of the multitude of persons who enter the sanctuary, many have only a formal, external and ostensible, not a substantial sympathy, or actual concern, with the holy Reality which is there embodied and presented. They throng the visible courts, without touching, in living faith, the sacred Presence, the life-giving hand of the Holy One who inhabits it. F. D. H.

5-7. This makes their moral duty toward their fellow-men exceedingly emphatic, and shows that one of the great, crying and fatal sins of the nation was its rotten social morals, the utterly corrupt moral life of the people. It was not their idolatry merely that ruined them. They had become horribly oppressive, cruelly unjust, fearfully false to all the duties of the second table of the law, as well as to those of the first. In all these things they must thoroughly amend their ways, else the Lord could not and would not let them remain in that land.

8-11. The idea of the false prophets which God here so strongly rebukes, was that they were saved from all danger of incurring His displeasure and His judgments for their sins by their religious worship in this Temple. This worship (in their view) bought for them an absolute plenary indulgence for all the sin they might choose to commit. They were so saved by it that they could go on and perpetrate all these abominations named in verse 9—stealing, murder, adultery, false swearing and idolatry—and yet have nothing to fear! This would be, indeed, making the house upon which God’s name had been called “a den of robbers,” where they might nestle securely, might house and shelter themselves against all danger from a just and holy God!

12. Shiloh, situated (Judges 21 : 19) “on the north side of Bethel, and on the east side of the highway that goeth up from Bethel to Shechem,” the location of the tabernacle from the days of Joshua (18 : 1) to the death of Eli (1 Sam. 4), lay within the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, and had been utterly desolated when that kingdom was destroyed by the Assyrian arms, B.C. 722—i.e., one hundred and eleven years before Jehoiakim came to his throne. The Jews might look upon the doom of Shiloh, and see that God did not shield a wicked city from ruin because it had been the residence of His own visible glory among His people, and the one place of the required Temple worship. They might see that it was for the wickedness of His people Israel that God had laid that place desolate, and in this fact might read their own doom! H. C.—We cannot stand on Shiloh without an oppressive sense of its God-forsaken desolation. Scarcely a tree, not a dwelling is in sight; straggling valleys, too open to be termed glens, within an amphitheatre of dreary, round-topped hills, bare and rocky, without being picturesque, are the only characteristics of this featureless scene. Tristram.

13. They continued obstinate in their sin; that is proved by the testimony of God’s messengers, by whom He spake unto them to return and repent, “rising up early and speaking,” as one in care, as one in earnest, as one who would lose no time in dealing with them; nay, who should take the fittest opportunity for speaking to them early in the morning, when, if ever, they were sober and had their thoughts free and clear; but it was all in vain; God spake, but they heard not, they heeded not, they never minded; He called them, but they answered not, they would not come at His call. What God has spoken to us greatly aggravates what we have done against Him. H.

God is ever speaking to His children. There is a Divine voice speaking, not to favored prophets ets in rare moments of spiritual elevation, but to all men, that all who will may hear. This voice comes to us in many forms. The voice of nature—the proclamation of the power and wisdom of God in the awful, silent speech of the stars (Ps. 19 : 3), and the gentler language which tells of His tenderness and beneficence in the songs of spring and the glad shout of the harvest. The voice of history. God is in history, and speaks to us through the events of the past, warning by judgments (verse 12), inviting by acts of deliverance and gifts of mercy (Ps. 105). The voice of providence in daily life. Has not God been speaking to us through our own experience, using various prophetic agencies—the advent of a new joy, the cloud of a great sorrow, a visitation of the angel of death to the home? Has He not repeatedly roused, invited, pleaded and consoled us with voices from our eternity? The voice of prophecy. God had often so spoken to the Jews before the days of Jeremiah, and reference is plainly made to this fact in the text. That voice still lives, because truth is eternal. Thus God speaks to us through the inspired thoughts of the Bible. The voice of Christ. He is the “Word” of God made articulate in the dialect of men (John 1 : 1-14). He who sees Christ hears the voice of God. The voice of conscience. This is God speaking within the soul. Every time we feel compunction at doing wrong or an inward urging to do the right God is pleading in our heart by direct communion, spirit with spirit. P. C.

15. That which will exhaust the long-suffering of God is clearly shown us. It is not the fact of sin, great sin, repeated sin, but it is when, as in the case before us, sin has been persisted in in spite of every kind and degree of plainest warning. God had not merely let them know of the peril of their conduct, but His loving solicitude for them had shown itself in the most marked ways. God not only spoke to them, but like as “those who watch for the morning” rise up early, so God Himself awoke early—i.e., He chose the most favorable hours, the most probable means for gaining attention to the truths which He, by His prophets, spoke to them. But it was all of no avail. “Ye heard not; . . . ye answered not.” Now, it is sin persisted in, in spite of all such Divine solicitude so repeatedly manifested, that God will not pardon. P. C.

16. This prohibition of prayer, this forbidding the prophet, and, by implication, all other good men to pray any longer for the reprieve and pardon of the Jewish nation, most terribly sealed their doom! In no other way could the Lord testify so absolutely to His purpose to destroy.

22,23. There can be no doubt that this passage means, I never thought of requiring or of accepting bloody sacrifices without obedience. Comparing the one with the other, sacrifices are nothing—obedience is everything. Even when I brought your fathers out of Egypt and gave them My statutes by the hand of Moses, I was careful to promise My presence and favor only on condition of obedience, saying, “If ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all people” (Ex. 19 : 5). On the very point now before us, the relative value of sacrifice and obedience, the Lord said, by Hosea (6 : 6), “I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings;” in which passage the latter clause is the more precise statement. So Samuel said to Saul (1 Sam. 15 : 22), “Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.” The strong form is put forcibly and admirably by King David in his most penitent hour: “For Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it; Thou delightest not in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise” (Ps. 51 : 17). Passages of like import may be seen (Ps. 50 : 8–15 and Isa. 1 : 11–17). Great moral lessons lie here: first of all, that the rituals of worship have not the least value before God unless the heart be in them and they really represent a loving and obedient spirit; and next, that religious rites—the ceremonies and forms of worship—must never supersede and supplant essential morality in the sense of love supreme to God, and love impartial and equal toward all fellow-men—the latter evermore implying all the details of the second table of the law. So that when men think to make ritual services their price for an indulgence to sin with impunity, they need not expect, by such means, to bribe the Holy One! Let them know that He abhors their sin, and will be likely, in some decisive way, to show it!

31,32. This valley of the son of Hinnom lay on the south of Jerusalem. Tophet was a special locality in this valley. Here the Jews built chapels, fanes or small-sized temples for the worship of Moloch, in honor of whom they burned their own children in the fire. This murdering of children in idol worship was most revolting to Jehovah. And now, to make the form of God’s judgment on the nation a perpetual reminder of the sin which it punished, the Lord ordains that the place shall henceforth be one of general slaughter, so that it shall no longer be called Tophet, nor the valley of the son of Hinnom, but “the valley of slaughter,” and men shall bury in it till there be no more place to bury. Josiah had previously defiled the place to prevent its being used ever again for the murder of children in honor of Moloch. (See 2 K. 23 : 10.) Jewish writers testify that it was made the great receptacle for the filth of the city, and that a fire was kept continually burning there to consume this filth and the worms that forever fed upon it. Hence the place, with its ever-ascending columns of smoke, its stench, its loathsome associations of crime and of all abominations, became a vivid image of hell—the place of eternal abode and punishment for all the hopeless reprobates of the moral universe of God.

The earliest reference to Tophet in the Scriptures is by Isaiah (30 : 33). The other references are 2 K. 23 : 10, where Josiah defiled it; and in Jeremiah, besides the present passage, are 19 : 6, 11–14. Without naming it, Jeremiah refers to it (31 : 40). The last verse of the Book of Isaiah, without naming the place either as Tophet or the valley of the son of Hinnom, yet manifestly alludes to it as a place not far from the holy city, to which, from time to time, the people would “go forth and there look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against God; for their worm shall not die, nor shall their fire be quenched, and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.” Gehenna in the New Testament is a word transferred from the Greek language, in which it means “the land of Hinnom.” It is well known that our Lord used this term for the place of future punishment. Since some suggestive word must be used, none could be found more appropriate and significant. The history of Tophet and Gehenna; the associations that clustered about it; the cruel murder of infants there in honor of Moloch; its doom to be a place of slaughter; the dreadful carnage that came as a just retribution for its horrid infant murders; the depth of its filth; the loathsomeness of its stench; its worms that never died; its fires that were never quenched, and its smoke that never ceased to rise in the distant view from the holy city—all conspired to make this a fearfully truthful image of hell.

Chap. 8. The designation of date—“at that time”—and the general course of thought, combine to show that this chapter is closely con-

nected with chap. 7, a part of the same message. It pursues the same subject, the impending doom coming upon the nation through the agency of the Chaldeans; its causes in the sins of the people; the bitterness and the hopelessness of this doom.