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Matthew Henry |
J E R E M I A H.
CHAP. XIX.
The same melancholy theme is the subject of this chapter that was of
those foregoing–the approaching ruin of Judah and Jerusalem for their
sins. This Jeremiah had often foretold; here he has particularly full
orders to foretel it again.
I. He must set their sins in order before them, as he had often done,
especially their idolatry,
II. He must describe the particular judgments which were now coming
apace upon them for these sins,
III. He must do this in the valley of Tophet, with great solemnity, and
for some particular reasons,
IV. He must summon a company of the elders together to be witnesses of
this,
V. He must confirm this, and endeavour to affect his hearers with it,
by a sign, which was the breaking of an earthen bottle, signifying that
they should be dashed to pieces like a potter’s vessel,
VI. When he had done this in the valley of Tophet he ratified it in
the court of the temple,
Thus were all likely means tried to awaken this stupid senseless people
to repentance, that their ruin might be prevented; but all in vain.
| The Desolation of Jerusalem. | B. C. 600. |
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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 God
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 a 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.
The corruption of man having made it necessary that precept
should be upon precept, and line upon line (so unapt are we to
receive, and so very apt to let slip, the things of God), the grace of
God has provided that there shall be, accordingly, precept upon
precept, and line upon line, that those who are irreclaimable may
be inexcusable. For this reason the prophet is here sent with a message
to the same purport with what he had often delivered, but with some
circumstances that might make it the more taken notice of, a thing
which ministers should study, for a little circumstance may sometimes
be a great advantage, and those that would win souls must be wise.
I. He must take of the elders and chief men, both in church and state, to be his auditors and witnesses to what he said–the ancients of the people and the ancients of the priests, the most eminent men both in the magistracy and in the ministry,
that they might be faithful witnesses to record, as those
It is strange that these great men should be at the beck of a poor
prophet, and obey his summons to attend him out of the city, they know
not whither and they knew not why. But, though the generality of the
elders were disaffected to him, yet it is likely that there were some
few among them who looked upon him as a prophet of the Lord, and would
pay this respect to the heavenly vision. Note, Persons of rank and
figure have an opportunity of honouring God, by a diligent attendance
on the ministry of the word and other divine institutions; and they
ought to think it an honour, and no disparagement to themselves, yea,
though the circumstances be mean and despicable. It is certain that the
greatest of men is less than the least of the ordinances of God.
II. He must go to the valley of the son of Hinnom, and deliver
this message there; for the word of the Lord is not bound to any
one place; as good a sermon may be preached in the valley of Tophet as
in the gate of the temple. Christ preached on a mountain and out of a
ship. This valley lay partly on the south side of Jerusalem, but the
prophet’s way to it was by the entry on the east gate–the sun
gate
(v. 2),
so some render it, and suppose it to look not towards the sun-rising,
but the noon sun–the potter’s gate, so some. This sermon must
be preached in that place, in the valley of the son of Hinnom,
1. Because there they had been guilty of the vilest of their
idolatries, the sacrificing of their children to Moloch, a horrid piece
of impiety, which the sight of the place might serve to remind them of
and upbraid them with.
2. Because there they should feel the sorest of their calamities; there
the greatest slaughter should be made among them; and, it being the
common sink of the city, let them look upon it and see what a miserable
spectacle this magnificent city would be when it should be all like the
valley of Tophet. God bids him go thither, and proclaim there the
words that I shall tell thee, when thou comest thither; whereby it
appears (as Mr. Gataker well observed) that God’s messages were
frequently not revealed to the prophets before the very instant of time
wherein they were to deliver them.
III. He must give general notice of a general ruin now shortly coming
upon Judah and Jerusalem,
v. 3.
He must, as those that make proclamation, begin with an Oyes: Hear
you the word of the Lord, though it be a terrible word, for you may
thank yourselves if it be so. Both rulers and ruled must attend to it,
at their peril; the kings of Judah, the king and his sons, the
king and his princes and privy-counsellors, must hear the word of the
King of kings, for, high as they are, he is above them. The
inhabitants of Jerusalem also must hear what God has to say to
them. Both princes and people have contributed to the national guilt
and must concur in the national repentance, or they will both share in
the national ruin. Let them all know that the Lord of hosts, who
is therefore able to do what he threatens, though he is the God of
Israel, nay, because he is so, will therefore punish them in the
first place for their iniquities
(Amos iii. 2):
He will bring evil upon this place (upon Judah and
Jerusalem) so surprising, and so dreadful, that whosoever
hears it, his ears shall tingle; whosoever hears the
prediction of it, hears the report and representation of it, it shall
make such an impression of terror upon him that he shall still think he
hears it sounding in his ears and shall not be able to get it out of
his mind. The ruin of Eli’s house is thus described
and of Jerusalem,
IV. He must plainly tell them what their sins were for which God had
this controversy with them,
They are charged with apostasy from God (They have forsaken me)
and abuse of the privileges of the visible church, and which they had
been dignified–They have estranged this place. Jerusalem (the
holy city), the temple (the holy house), which was designed for the
honour of God and the support of his kingdom among men, they had
alienated from those purposes, and (as some render the word) they
had strangely abused. They had so polluted both with their
wickedness that God had disowned both, and abandoned them to ruin. He
charges them with an affection for and the adoration of false
gods, such as neither they nor their fathers have known,
such as never had recommended themselves to their belief and esteem by
any acts of power or goodness done for them or their ancestors, as that
God had abundantly done whom they forsook; yet they took them at a
venture for their gods; nay, being fond of change and novelty, they
liked them the better for their being upstarts, and new fashions in
religion were as grateful to their fancies as in other things. They
also stand charged with murder, wilful murder, from malice prepense:
They have filled this place with the blood of innocents. It was
Manasseh’s sin
which the Lord would not pardon. Nay, as if idolatry and murder,
committed separately, were not bad enough and affront enough to God and
man, they have put them together, have consolidated them into one
complicated crime, that of burning their children in the fire to Baal
(v. 5),
which was the most insolent defiance to all the laws both of natural
and revealed religion that ever mankind was guilty of; and by it they
openly declared that they loved their new gods better than ever they
loved the true God, though they were such cruel task-masters that they
required human sacrifices (inhuman I should call them), which the Lord
Jehovah, whose all lives and souls are, never demanded from his
worshippers; he never spoke of such a thing, nor came it into
his mind. See
V. He must endeavour to affect them with the greatness of the
desolation that was coming upon them. He must tell them (as he had done
before,
that this valley of the son of Hinnom shall acquire a new name,
the valley of slaughter
(v. 6),
for
(v. 7)
multitudes shall fall there by the sword, when either
they sally out upon the besiegers and are repulsed or attempt to make
their escape and are seized: They shall fall before their
enemies, who not only endeavour to make themselves masters of their
houses and estates, but have such an implacable enmity to them that
they seek their lives; they thirst after their blood, and, when
they are dead, will not allow a cartel for the burying of the slain,
but their carcases shall be meat for the fowls of the heaven
and beasts of the earth. What a dismal place will the valley of
Tophet be then! And as for those that remain within the city, and will
not capitulate with the besiegers, they shall perish for want of food,
when first they have eaten the flesh of their sons and
daughters, and dearest friends, through the straitness
wherewith their enemies shall straiten them,
v. 9.
This was threatened in the law as an instance of the extremity to which
the judgments of God should reduce them
(Lev. xxvi. 29, Deut. xxviii. 53)
and was accomplished,
And, lastly, the whole city shall be desolate, the
houses laid in ashes, the inhabitants slain or taken prisoners; there
shall be no resort to it, nor any thing in it but what looks rueful and
horrid; so that every one that passes by shall be astonished
(v. 8),
as he had said before,
That place which holiness had made the joy of the whole earth
sin had made the reproach and shame of the whole earth.
VI. He must assure them that all their attempts to prevent and avoid
this ruin, so long as they continued impenitent and unreformed, would
be fruitless and vain
(v. 7):
I will make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem (of the
princes and senators of Judah and Jerusalem) in this place, in
the royal palace, which lay on the south side of the city, not far from
the place where the prophet now stood. Note, There is no fleeing from
God’s justice but by fleeing to his mercy. Those that will not make
good God’s counsel, by humbling themselves under his mighty hand, shall
find that God will make void their counsel and blast their projects,
which they think ever so well concerted for their own preservation.
There is no counsel or strength against the Lord.
| The Desolation of Jerusalem. | B. C. 600. |
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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 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.
The message of wrath delivered in the
is here enforced, that it might gain credit, two ways:–
I. By a visible sign. The prophet was to take along with him an
earthen bottle
(v. 1),
and, when he had delivered his message, he was to break the
bottle to pieces
(v. 10),
and the same that were auditors of the sermon must be spectators of the
sign. He had compared this people, in the chapter before, to the
potter’s clay, which is easily marred in the making. But some might
say, “It is past that with us; we have been made and hardened long
since.” “And what though you be,” says he, “the potter’s vessel is as
soon broken in the hand of any man as the vessel while it is soft clay
is marred in the potter’s hand, and its case is, in this respect, much
worse, that the vessel while it is soft clay, though it be marred, may
be moulded again, but, after it is hardened, when it is broken it can
never be pieced again.” Perhaps what they see will affect them more
than what they only hear talk of; that is the intention of sacramental
signs, and teaching by symbols was anciently used. In the explication
of this sign he must inculcate what he had before said, with a further
reference to the place where this was done, in the valley of Tophet.
1. As the bottle was easily, irresistibly, and irrecoverably broken by
the Chaldean army,
They depended much upon the firmness of their constitution, and the
fixedness of their courage, which they thought hardened them like a
vessel of brass; but the prophet shows that all that did but harden
them like a vessel of earth, which, though hard, is brittle and sooner
broken than that which is not so hard. Though they were made vessels of
honour, still they were vessels of earth, and so they shall be made to
know if they dishonour God and themselves, and serve not the purposes
for which they were made. It is God himself, who made them, that
resolves to unmake them: I will break this people and this city,
dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel; the doom of the
heathen
but now Jerusalem’s doom,
A potter’s vessel, when once broken, cannot be made whole
again, cannot be cured, so the word is. The ruin of Jerusalem shall
be an utter ruin; no hand can repair it but his that broke it; and if
they return to him, though he has torn, he will heal.
2. This was done in Tophet, to signify two things:–
(1.) That Tophet should be the receptacle of the slain: They shall
bury in Tophet till there be no place to bury any more there; they
shall jostle for room to lay their dead, and a very little room will
then serve those who, while they lived, laid house to house and
field to field. Those that would be placed alone in the midst of
the earth while they were above ground, and obliged all about them
to keep their distance, must lie with the multitude when they are
underground, for there are innumerable before them.
(2.) That Tophet should be a resemblance of the whole city
(v. 12):
I will make this city as Tophet. As they had filled the valley
of Tophet with the slain which they sacrificed to their idols, so God
will fill the whole city with the slain that shall fall as sacrifices
to the justice of God. We read
of Josiah’s defiling Tophet, because it had been abused to idolatry,
which he did (as should seem,
by filling it with the bones of men; and, whatever it was
before, thenceforward it was looked upon as a detestable place. Dead
carcases, and other filth of the city, were carried thither, and a fire
was continually kept there for the burning of it. This was the posture
of that valley when Jeremiah was sent thither to prophesy; and so
execrable a place was it looked upon to be that, in the language of our
Saviour’s time, hell was called, in allusion to it, Gehenna, the
valley of Hinnom. “Now” (says God) “since that blessed reformation,
when Tophet was defiled, did not proceed as it ought to have done, nor
prove a thorough reformation, but though the idols in Tophet were
abolished and made odious those in Jerusalem remained, therefore will I
do with the city as Josiah did by Tophet, fill it with the bodies of
men, and make it a heap of rubbish.” Even the houses of Jerusalem,
and those of the kings of Judah, the royal palaces not
excepted, shall be defiled as the place of Tophet
(v. 13),
and for the same reason, because of the idolatries that have been
committed there; since they will not defile them by a reformation, God
will defile them by a destruction, because upon the roofs of
their houses they have burnt incense unto the host of heaven. The
flat roofs of their houses were sometimes used by devout people as
convenient places for prayer
(Acts x. 9),
and by idolaters they were used as high places, on which they
sacrificed to strange gods, especially to the host of heaven,
the sun, moon, and stars, that there they might be so much nearer to
them and have a clearer and fuller view of them. We read of those that
worshipped the host of heaven upon the house-tops
(Zeph. i. 5),
and of altars on the top of the upper chamber of Ahaz,
2 Kings xxiii. 12.
This sin upon the house-tops brought a curse into the house, which
consumed it, and made it a dunghill like Tophet.
II. By a solemn recognition and ratification of what he had said in
the court of the Lord’s house,
v. 14, 15.
The prophet returned from Tophet to the temple, which stood upon the
hill over that valley, and there confirmed, and probably repeated, what
he had said in the valley of Tophet, for the benefit of those who had
not heard it; what he had said he would stand to. Here, as often
before, he both assures them of judgments coming upon them and assigns
the cause of them, which was their sin. Both these are here put
together in a little compass, with a reference to all that had gone
before.
1. The accomplishment of the prophecies is here the judgment
threatened. The people flattered themselves with a conceit that God
would be better than his word, that the threatening was but to frighten
them and keep them in awe a little; but the prophet tells them that
they deceive themselves if they think so: For thus saith the Lord of
hosts, who is able to make his words good, I will bring upon
this city, and upon all her towns, all the smaller cities that
belong to Jerusalem the metropolis, all the evil that I have
pronounced against it. Note, Whatever men may think to the
contrary, the executions of Providence will fully answer the
predictions of the word, and God will appear as terrible against sin
and sinners as the scripture makes him; nor shall the unbelief of men
make either his promises or his threatenings of no effect or of less
effect than they were thought to be of.
2. The contempt of the prophecies is here the sin charged upon them, as
the procuring cause of this judgment. It is because they have
hardened their necks, and would not bow and bend them to the yoke
of God’s commands, would not hear my words, that is, would not
heed them and yield obedience to them. Note, The obstinacy of sinners
in their sinful ways is altogether their own fault; if their necks are
hardened, it is their own act and deed, they have hardened them; if
they are deaf to the word of God, it is because they have stopped their
own ears. We have need therefore to pray that God, by his grace, would
deliver us from hardness of heart and contempt of his word and
commandments.
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