Jeremiah 19 – “Smashing the Vessel”

11 - Jeremiah

dv766095Hebrew-English Text
I. Summary
Jeremiah smashes a vessel to illustrate how Yahweh will smash the people of Judah on account of their idolatry.

II. Photo
Jeremiah smashes the vessel: “Thus said the Lord of Hosts: So will I smash this people and this city, as one smashes a potter’s vessel, which can never be mended.” (v. 11)

III. Select Verses
1-2: Thus said the LORD: Go buy a jug of potter’s ware. And [take] some of the elders of the people and the priests, and go out to the Valley of Ben-hinnom — at the entrance of the Harsith Gate — and proclaim there the words which I will speak to you.
4-5: For they and their fathers and the kings of Judah have forsaken Me, and have made this place alien [to Me]; they have sacrificed in it to other gods whom they have not experienced, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. They have built shrines to Baal, to put their children to the fire as burnt offerings to Baal — which I never commanded, never decreed, and which never came to My mind.
9: And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall devour one another’s flesh — because of the desperate straits to which they will be reduced by their enemies, who seek their life.
10-11: Then you shall smash the jug in the sight of the men who go with you, and say to them: “Thus said the LORD of Hosts: So will I smash this people and this city, as one smashes a potter’s vessel, which can never be mended. And they shall bury in Topheth until no room is left for burying.
13: The houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah shall be unclean, like that place Topheth — all the houses on the roofs of which offerings were made to the whole host of heaven and libations were poured out to other gods.”

IV. Outline

1-13. The jug analogy
    1-2. Command to bring a jug and the leaders to Ben-Hinnom
    3. Disaster approaches
    4-5. Rationale: generational idolatry
    6-9. Death and destruction await Jerusalem
    10-11. Pedagogic action: Yahweh will destroy the city as one smashes a jug
    12-13. Jerusalem will be impure as the Topheth worship site (outside of Jerusalem)
14-15. Jeremiah preaches destruction to the rest of the people

V. Comment
No comment today. Stay tuned.

VI. Works Used

(see “Commentaries” page)

Photo copied from http://vanpay.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/broken-vase.jpg

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