Jeremiah 7:31

High places. — Not the same word as in Jeremiah 7:29, but bamoth, as in the “high places” of Baal, in Numbers 22:41; Numbers 23:3, the Bamoth-baal of Joshua 13:17. The word had become almost technical for the mounds, natural or (as in this passage) artificial, on which altars to Jehovah or to other gods were erected, and appears in 1 Samuel 9:12; 1 Kings 3:4; Ezekiel 20:29; Amos 7:9.

Tophet. — This appears to have been originally, not a local name, but a descriptive epithet. The word appears in Job 17:6 (“by-word” in the Authorised version) as a thing spat upon and loathed. Its use is probably therefore analogous to the scorn with which the prophets substituted bosheth, the “shameful thing,” for Baal (e.g., Jeremiah 3:24; Jeremiah 11:13). When the prediction is repeated in Jeremiah 19:5; Jeremiah 32:35, we have the “high places of Baal,” and “Tophet” here is obviously substituted for that name in indignant contempt. The word in Isaiah 30:33, though not identical in form (Tophteh, not Tophet), had probably the same meaning. Other etymologies give as the meaning of the word “a garden,” “a place of burning,” or “a place of drums,” i.e., a music grove, and so connect it more closely with the Molech ritual. Possibly the last was the original meaning of the name, for which, as said above, the prophets used the term of opprobrium.

The son of Hinnom. — Possibly the first recorded owner, or a local hero. The name is perpetuated in later Jewish language in Ge-henna = Ge-Hinnom = the vale of Hinnom. It was older than the Molech worship with which it became identified, and appears in the “Doomsday Book” of Israel (Joshua 15:8; Joshua 18:16).

To burn their sons and their daughters. — The words are important as determining the character of the act more vaguely described in Jeremiah 32:35, as “making to pass through the fire.” The children were, in some cases at least, actually burnt, though often, perhaps (see Ezekiel 16:21), slain first. Horrible as the practice seems to us, it was part of the Canaanite or Phœnician worship of Molech or Malcom (Leviticus 18:21; Leviticus 20:2), and had been practised by Ahaz (2 Kings 16:3; 2 Chronicles 28:3) and Manasseh (2 Kings 21:6; 2 Chronicles 33:6).