Jeremiah 7:29-31

IV. POLLUTED WORSHIP Jeremiah 7:29 to Jeremiah 8:3

Again Jeremiah takes up the subject of paganized worship. He speaks of the present defilement of the population of Jerusalem (Jeremiah 7:29), of the Temple (Jeremiah 7:30) and of the land of Judah (Jeremiah 7:31). Then Jeremiah describes the destruction which will come as a result of the polluted worship: defilement of the sanctuaries (Jeremiah 7:32-33), desolation of the land (Jeremiah 7:34) and desecration of the dead (Jeremiah 8:1-3).

A. The Present Defilement Jeremiah 7:29-31

TRANSLATION

(29) Cut off your hair and cast it away and take up a lamentation upon the bare hills for the LORD has rejected and forsaken the generation of His wrath. (30) For the children of Judah have done evil in My eyes (oracle of the LORD); they have set their abominations in the House which is called by My Name to defile it. (31) They have built the high places of Topheth which are 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 even enter My mind.

COMMENTS

In Jeremiah 7:29 Jeremiah resorts to one of his most devastating oratorical devices, the sarcastic imperative. He urges the daughter of Jerusalem[181] to shave off her long hair[182] as a sign of mourning and take up a lamentation. The present generation has been rejected and forsaken by God. In ancient times the divorce of a woman was a very sad affair since the former wife was left destitute. For her innumerable acts of spiritual adultery the daughter of Zion has been divorced by God. She should realize her plight and lament it. This is the generation which will experience the wrath of the living God (Jeremiah 7:29).

[181] The pronoun and the verb are feminine.
[182] The Hebrew word usually refers. to the long hair of a Nazarite. But here the word seems to have lost Its primary meaning land refers to the long, unshorn hair of a woman.

Denial of apostasy was impossible for it was open and flagrant. The abominations of heathendom, the cult objects used in pagan cults, had been set up in the Temple of the Lord. Manasseh built altars for all the hosts of heaven in the two courts of the Temple. He even went so far as to set an image of the Canaanite goddess Asherah in the Temple (2 Kings 21:5-7). This was the height of insolence, the crowning act of apostasy. The Temple of the Lord was defiled by the presence of these pagan images and cult objects (Jeremiah 7:30). Furthermore they had built special high places in the valley of the son of Hinnom[183] where human sacrifice was openly practiced. The meaning and etymology of the word Topheth are uncertain. It seems to be akin to a word meaning fireplace. Most likely the Topheth was the pit in which human victims were burned.[184] Such human sacrifices were to the god Moloch who sometimes generically is called Baal (Jeremiah 19:5). God had never commanded the wretched practice of offering children as burnt offerings and never did He condone it (Jeremiah 7:31).

[183] Since the days of Joshua this valley near Jerusalem had been known as the valley of the son of Hinnom. See Joshua 15:8; Joshua 18:16

[184] Cf. Jeremiah 19:5; Jeremiah 32:35; Ezekiel 16:20-21; 2 Kings 23:10.