Jeremiah 7c: Cut Off Your Hair.

 Last week we learned that according to God neither worship or rituals (songs or sacraments) nor sacrifices (sheep or tithes) come first. First comes obedience to God. God says that this was his first word to newly escaped Israelites: “Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you” (Jeremiah 7:21-23). There is proper worship with sacraments and offerings, but these will not stand alone. The main point is obedience to God, and then proper behavior will follow (actions such not denying justice to the alien, the orphan, or the widow, and generally loving your neighbor as yourself. Read Deuteronomy 27:11–28:1-2 where Moses pronounces The Twelve Curses before the people enter the Promised Land). 

 Two prominent words in this chapter are dabar/davar and shama, which are repeated multiple times. The first means ‘to speak’ or ‘to command’, so as a noun it means ‘the word’ that is spoken. Some version of this verb is used when God tells the prophet to speak or preach his word. The second word means ‘to listen’ or ‘to obey’, so there is little difference in Hebrew between hearing and obeying. We carry a similar meaning in English when we say, ‘Listen up!’ or “Hear this!’ 

Jeremiah 7:27-29.  So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. You shall say to them: This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the LORD their God and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips.

Cut off your hair and throw it away;   

raise a lamentation on the bare heights,

for the LORD has rejected and forsaken   

the generation that provoked his wrath.

God slips over from prose to poetry to emphasize the irony. He is telling the people of Judah, ‘You might as well throw away any sign of your commitment to be holy, things like the long hair of a Nazirite. It is too late for this generation because I have already rejected you’. Not exactly Good News, is it?

Jeremiah 7:30-31.  For the people of Judah have done evil in my sight, says the LORD; they have set their abominations in the house that is called by my name, defiling it. And they go on building the high place of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire—which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. 

 A brief diversion is in order here because God through his prophet Jeremiah is making some serious accusations against the leaders and people of Judah. Perhaps the import is lost on us because the language is different and difficult. If we don’t know what the charge is, then we do not understand how this Scripture might apply to us.

 Remember that Jeremiah began his prophetic ministry in the 13th year of King Josiah of Judah (640-609); and that Josiah was one of the few reformers who tried to root out pagan worship. When he got going, Jeremiah supported him in this effort. How bad were things? Here are a couple of significant reforms that Josiah and Jeremiah made.

 In temple renovations, the priest Hilkiah found a scroll, thought to be a copy of Deuteronomy. Josiah had it read and it revealed how far the Israelites had drifted from obedience to Yahweh. Josiah tore his clothes in repentance, then sent Hilkiah to the prophetess Huldah to hear the word of the Lord concerning the revelations in this book. Huldah prophesied that God was indeed full of wrath because he had been abandoned by Judah, but there was hope since Josiah had repented.

Here is a short list of what King Josiah did (all from II Kings 23:4-27).  

 “He brought out of the temple all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven; … he burned them outside Jerusalem.”  

“He destroyed all the high places in the towns and in Jerusalem” (a paraphrase of a longer section). 

“He broke down the houses of the male temple prostitutes who were in the house of the LORD”

“He defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of Ben-hinnom, so that no one would make a son or daughter pass through fire as an offering to Molech.”

This is only a summary (no thanks to AI). Read the whole chapter of II Kings 23 to get the full picture. How is it possible for the kings, for the temple priests, and for Jerusalem to fall so low in obvious disobedience to the very basic commands of Yahweh? Their current life was the culmination of years of rebellion and disobedience; it did not happen overnight. They are like the proverbial frog in a slowly heated pot who is not aware that he is about to be boiled to death. 

 Some people were always ready to seek after other idols, ideals, and ideology from the day that they stepped out of Egypt. They wanted to be able to manipulate their gods in order to achieve power, wealth, and satisfaction. When kings took the throne, they were, for the most part, susceptible to the same temptations that Christ faced: the temptation to carry out what appeared to be the will of God but in their own way without any discipline or suffering on their part. Better to make the other people suffer for what you want. 

 What about the priests and prophets? They too were willing to attach themselves to power, to do the bidding of an evil leader in order to share in the benefits. Hard to believe, isn’t it? 

Jeremiah 7:32-34.  Therefore the days are surely coming, says the LORD, when it will no more be called Topheth or the valley of the son of Hinnom but the valley of Slaughter, for they will bury in Topheth until there is no more room. The corpses of this people will be food for the birds of the air and for the animals of the earth, and no one will frighten them away. And I will bring to an end the sound of mirth and gladness, the voice of the bride and bridegroom in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, for the land shall become a waste.

‘Topeth’ is probably not a Hebrew term, but an Aramaic word referring to an ‘oven fireplace, or hearth’ (Craig Keener and John Walton, editors of The NRSV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, 2019, page 1242). “It was apparently a site of sacrifice in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, which later became a smoldering rubbish pit outside Jerusalem known as Gehenna, used by Jesus as a picture of the destructive fires of Hell” (Christopher J. H. Wright, The Message of Jeremiah, 2014, page 109). 

 God has decided if the sacrifice of innocent children is what you want, how do you feel about the sacrifice of this whole generation which will fill the whole valley with unburied corpses? That will bring an end to the kingdom of Judah. There will be no celebrations for people who have no reason to celebrate. 

Jeremiah 8:1-3.  At that time, says the LORD, the bones of the kings of Judah, the bones of its officials, the bones of the priests, the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be brought out of their tombs, and they shall be spread before the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven, which they have loved and served, which they have followed, and which they have inquired of and worshiped, and they shall not be gathered or buried; they shall be like dung on the surface of the ground. Death shall be preferred to life by all the remnant that remains of this evil family in all the places where I have driven them, says the LORD of hosts.

You want to worship the sun, moon, and stars? Fine. How about we scatter all the bones of the people of Jerusalem, high and low, over the valley so that they can always look up at the sun, moon, and stars? No funeral, no ‘rest in peace’, no respect for the dead. How’s that grab you?

God expects obedience and will not accept mindless worship as a substitute. The mistreatment of children, elders, and aliens will not be tolerated in God’s society. Going to church provides no automatic security shield.