What does Jeremias Chapter 19 say, and which statements belong to its speaker?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

The bottle command accompanies accusations about this place. Slaughter and siege precede the breaking comparison. The court proclamation repeats hardened refusal to hear.

Chapter breakdown

Jeremias 19 receives a command to take an earthen bottle, with ancients of people and priests, to Ennom's valley beside the entry of the earthen gate. Kings and inhabitants must hear an evil that makes ears tingle. Forsaking and profaning this place, sacrifice to unfamiliar gods and innocent blood precede the accusation of burning children to Baal, never commanded, spoken or entering the Lord's mind.

Topheth and Ennom's valley will be named slaughter. Counsels of Juda and Jerusalem are defeated; sword, birds and beasts follow. The city becomes an astonishment and hissing, and siege brings eating sons', daughters' and friends' flesh. Neither a clinical madness explanation nor total exhaustion of every food is added. The bottle must be broken before the accompanying men, as a comparison for irreparable breaking of people and city. Burial in Topheth occurs because there is no other place for burial, not because Topheth itself has already filled.

The city is made like Topheth. Houses and royal houses are defiled where roof sacrifices to heaven's host and libations to strange gods occurred. Returning from Topheth, Jeremias stands in the Lord's court and tells all the people that the announced evil comes upon city and its cities because they hardened their necks and refused hearing. The text does not supply a rocky breaking surface or identify the earthen gate as a potter's gate.

The story inside

Opening: The bottle command accompanies accusations about this place. Development: Slaughter and siege precede the breaking comparison. Conclusion: The court proclamation repeats hardened refusal to hear.

Lessons worth keeping

1
The bottle command accompanies accusations about this place.
2
Slaughter and siege precede the breaking comparison.
3
The court proclamation repeats hardened refusal to hear.

Test your recall

Which images and requests does the speaker use, and what does the chapter leave unresolved?

Source edition and notes

Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.

Lines 85914–85937
19:1. Thus saith the Lord: Go, and take a potter’s earthen bottle, and take of the ancients of the people, and of the ancients of the priests: 19:2. And go forth into the valley of the son of Ennom, which is by the entry of the earthen gate: and there thou shalt proclaim the words that I shall tell thee. 19:3. And thou shalt say: Hear the word of the Lord, O ye kings of Juda, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold I will bring an affliction upon this place: so that whosoever shall hear it, his ears shall tingle: 19:4. Because they have forsaken me, and have profaned this place: and have sacrificed therein to strange gods, whom neither they nor their fathers knew, nor the kings of Juda: and they have filled this place with the blood of innocents. 19:5. And they have built the high places of Baalim, to burn their children with fire for a holocaust to Baalim: which I did not command, nor speak of, neither did it once come into my mind. 19:6. Therefore behold the days come, saith the Lord, that this place shall no more be called Topheth, nor the valley of the son of Ennom, but the valley of slaughter.
Lines 85954–85968
19:10. And thou shalt break the bottle in the sight of the men that shall go with thee. 19:11. And thou shalt say to them: Thus saith the Lord of hosts: Even so will I break this people, and this city, as the potter’s vessel is broken, which cannot be made whole again: and they shall be buried in Topheth, because there is no other place to bury in. 19:12. Thus will I do to this place, saith the Lord, and to the inhabitants thereof: and I will make this city as Topheth. 19:13. And the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Juda shall be unclean as the place of Topheth: all the houses upon whose roofs they have sacrificed to all the host of heaven, and have poured out drink offerings to strange gods.