Jeremiah 19.a. Back to the Potter's House.

 Jeremiah 19: 1-2. Thus said the LORD: Go and buy a potter’s earthenware jug. Take with you some of the elders of the people and some of the senior priests, and go out to the valley of the son of Hinnom at the entry of the Potsherd Gate, and proclaim there the words that I tell you.

 Cultural and Historical Context. The potter’s house is his place of business. Pottery began to appear around 12,000 years ago in Japan, then China, and finally in the Near East by about 10,000 years ago. It was widespread during the Neolithic period. Pottery was an important and enduring invention and clay was available nearly everywhere. 

 I can remember on the farm in the 1940s and 1950 we had large stoneware brown and tan crocks that were used to store meat during steer and hog butchering time. The butchered meat was pressed into a crock, then rendered fat was poured over it. The oil filled the open spaces in the pot and sealed the top until it was time to puncture the seal and use the meat. There was no refrigeration. Before glass, before steel, and before plastic, pots were in wide use. 

 Some of the elders and priests. Presumably not all of them would want to follow Jeremiah, but at least some agreed to see what he was up to.

 The Valley of the Son of Hinnom. This is a deep canyon just outside Jerusalem (Joshua 15: 8). In evil times, sometimes led by evil kings, there was an altar there called ‘Topheth’ that was used to sacrifice to the gods Ba’al and Molech (II Kings 23: 10, II Chronicles 28: 3, 33:6). 

 Eventually, parts of the valley were used as a garbage dump. Fires seemed to burn there continuously. Isaiah probably had this in mind when he predicted the final destination of the wicked (Isaiah 66: 24). When Jeremiah says the valley is outside the ‘Potsherd Gate’, this confirms that broken pots were taken there to be thrown in the dump.

 By the time of the New Testament (700 years after Israel’s kings and the prophet Isaiah), the valley was called Gehenna or Gehinnom. Matthew, for example, records Jesus using that Greek word many times. This is currently translated as ‘hell of fire’, for example in Matthew 5: 22; 18:9 or as just ‘hell’ as in Matthew 5: 22, 29, 30; 10: 28; and 23: 15 and 33.    

Why did Jeremiah call the elders and priests to go with him to the garbage dump?

Jeremiah 19: 3-6. You shall say: ‘Hear the word of the LORD, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: I am going to bring such disaster upon this place that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. Because the people have forsaken me and have profaned this place by making offerings in it to other gods whom neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah have known, and because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent and gone on building the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor did it enter my mind, therefore the days are surely coming, says the LORD, when this place shall no more be called Topheth or the valley of the son of Hinnom but the valley of Slaughter.

 Oh-oh! God has taken the leaders of Jerusalem to the woodshed. He goes to the very spot, right near Jerusalem, where they can see the evidence. No denial here. ‘This is the place’, God says, ’where you showed your true colors. You tried to hide your commitments to false gods by taking them outside Jerusalem. This is the place where you, of all things, sacrificed your own children in an effort to secure your power and well-being. Something I never commanded, nor did I ever think of it’ (paraphrase of Jeremiah 7: 31). 

 How many political leaders since that time have been willing to sacrifice the next generation in order to grasp power and benefit themselves? Answer: Too many.  

 God says, ‘How about we stop pretending and just call this place the Valley of Slaughter’. Perhaps we should rename some of our ‘historic’ sites as well. It’s not the Battle of Wounded Knee, it was the Slaughter of Wounded Knee.

Jeremiah 19: 7-9.  And in this place, I will make void the plans of Judah and Jerusalem and will make them fall by the sword before their enemies and by the hand of those who seek their life. I will give their dead bodies for food to the birds of the air and to the wild animals of the earth. And I will make this city a horror, a thing to be hissed at; everyone who passes by it will be horrified and will hiss because of all its disasters. And I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and all shall eat the flesh of their neighbors in the siege and in the distress with which their enemies and those who seek their life afflict them.

 ‘I know the plans that I have for you’, but now I will void the plans of Judah. 

 Cannibalism. European explorers seemed to call every new group that they encountered cannibals. Sometimes that was true but most often not. However, the propaganda did play well back home to quiet the critics of imperialism. 

 On the contrary, this is cannibalism by the home team. In Jerusalem under siege, supplies will run out, people will become desperate; that desperate. The coming destruction will be that bad, God says. 

 So, why did Jeremiah bring along his newly acquired pot?

Jeremiah 19: 10-13. Then you shall break the jug in the sight of those who go with you and shall say to them: Thus says the LORD of hosts: So will I break this people and this city as one breaks a potter’s vessel, so that it can never be mended. In Topheth they shall bury until there is no more room to bury. Thus will I do to this place, says the Lord, and to its inhabitants, making this city like Topheth.  And the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah shall be defiled like the place of Topheth—all the houses upon whose roofs offerings have been made to the whole host of heaven and libations have been poured out to other gods.

 This story about a pot is not the same as the first story about Jeremiah’s visit to the potter’s house. There is a difference of time and a difference of grace. The first story portrayed God like a potter breaking down and then remaking clay, and that represented God’s free hand with Judah. That was a time when God’s grace was still available, when the people were warned to repent, and when God was willing to reshape Judah’s society so that the people would become more godly, reflecting God’s character and God’s laws about how to treat other people.

 However, that was then and this is now. One can re-shape a lump of wet clay; one cannot reshape an already fired pot. Once the clay is fired, it is finished. The pot has hardened and it cannot be reshaped. It can only be smashed into potsherds. So that is what Jeremiah demonstrates.  

Jeremiah 19: 14-15.   When Jeremiah came from Topheth, where the LORD had sent him to prophesy, he stood in the court of the LORD’s house and said to all the people: Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: I am now bringing upon this city and upon all its towns all the disaster that I have pronounced against it, because they have stiffened their necks, refusing to hear my words.

 Though only ‘some’ priests came to the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom, word travels fast. People have questions, and Jeremiah has answers. Problem is, the priests do not like the answers that Jeremiah gives. So, they dismiss Jeremiah as God’s messenger and turn to others in hopes of hearing a different word from God. 

 With the internet, TV, and radio, we have a wide selection of smooth-talking preachers who sell comforting messages or, at times, raise false alarms to distract us from our own sin. Do not be deceived. Find someone who teaches the whole word of God for the whole people of God, not just selected passages for a narrow group of self-absorbed ‘Christians’. 

 Finally, like the people of Judah, we must ask; are we in a time of grace when we can still repent as a nation and be remade by God into truly godly people? Or are we entering a time of wrath when we are so hardened in our obvious flaws that we cannot be remade but must be smashed into potsherds? 

“America, America. God mend thine every flaw.”