Jeremiah 19 explained: A Smashed Jar in the Valley

A jar and witnesses (vv. 1-3)

Jeremiah buys a clay jar and leads senior leaders and priests to the Hinnom Valley just south of Jerusalem, by a gate probably named for broken pottery. There he announces a disaster so shocking that anyone who hears of it will feel their ears ring.

Why this valley (vv. 4-6)

In this valley people burned their own children as offerings to other gods, something God says he never commanded and that never even entered his mind. The spot called Topheth, a name whose meaning scholars are unsure of, will be renamed the Valley of Slaughter.

The coming siege (vv. 7-9)

The leaders' plans will fail, their dead will lie unburied, and passersby will be appalled at the ruined city. The siege will grow so desperate that people eat their own children, a horror the book of Lamentations says really happened when Babylon besieged Jerusalem.

Smashing the jar (vv. 10-13)

As the leaders watch, Jeremiah shatters the fired jar, which unlike soft clay cannot be reshaped or mended, to picture what will happen to the nation. The whole city will become as unclean with corpses as Topheth, including homes whose flat roofs were used to burn incense to the stars and planets.

Repeated at the temple (vv. 14-15)

Jeremiah returns to the temple courtyard, where crowds gathered, and repeats the warning to everyone. He says the disaster comes because the people were stubborn and refused to listen, pictured as a stiff neck that will not turn.

Key verse: Jeremiah 19:11

Something to think about

Jeremiah delivered his warning at the very spot where the harm had been done rather than from a distance; why might standing in the place of a wrong change how people face it?