Scripture Daily

Context No. 1455 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Context · Reflection

Jeremiah 19:1-6: in context

1Thus said the LORD, “Go, and buy a potter’s earthen container, and take some of the elders of the people and of the elders of the priests; 2and go out to the valley of the son of Hinnom, which is by the entry of the gate Harsith, and proclaim there the words that I will tell you. 3Say, ‘Hear the LORD’s word, kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: The LORD of Armies, the God of Israel says, “Behold, I will bring evil on this place, which whoever hears, his ears will tingle. 4Because they have forsaken me, and have defiled this place, and have burned incense in it to other gods that they didn’t know—they, their fathers, and the kings of Judah—and have filled this place with the blood of innocents, 5and have built the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire for burnt offerings to Baal, which I didn’t command, nor speak, which didn’t even enter into my mind. 6Therefore, behold, the days come,” says the LORD, “that this place will no more be called ‘Topheth’, nor ‘The Valley of the son of Hinnom’, but ‘The valley of Slaughter’.

God tells Jeremiah to buy a potter's earthen jar and take some of the elders out to the Valley of Hinnom, and there to proclaim judgment. The indictment is grievous: the people have forsaken God, filled this place with the blood of the innocent, and built high places to Baal where they burned their own children in the fire as offerings. And God says something striking about this last horror: it is a thing which I did not command, nor speak, nor did it even enter my mind. Therefore, he says, this valley will no longer be called Topheth or the Valley of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.

The phrase that arrests is God's repudiation of the child sacrifice done in his name: which I did not command, nor speak, nor did it even enter my mind. The people had taken up the practice of burning their children to Baal, and had presumably wrapped it in religious meaning, as devotion, as offering, as pleasing to the divine; and God rejects it utterly, with a horror that could hardly be stronger. Not only did he never command such a thing, it never so much as entered his mind; the very idea is foreign to him, abhorrent, the opposite of everything he is. There is a searching truth in that for how we discern what is truly from God. People have always been capable of doing terrible things and attaching God's name to them, of dressing cruelty and the shedding of innocent blood in religious clothing and calling it devotion. And here God draws a clear line: what is cruel, what destroys the innocent, what would burn a child, is not from him and never was, however religious its dress. It never entered his mind. This gives us a test. Whatever claims to be from God but bears the marks of cruelty, of harm to the innocent, of the destruction of the defenseless, can be judged by this word: such things do not come from the God whose mind they never entered. The God of scripture is not the author of cruelty done in his name. And the seriousness with which he takes innocent blood, renaming the valley of sacrifice the Valley of Slaughter, is a measure of how far such things are from him.

Do I test what claims to be from God by whether it bears the marks of cruelty or harm to the innocent, remembering that God repudiated the evil done in his name as something that never entered his mind, and that he is never the author of cruelty done in his name?

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