False Hopes

KEY VERSE: “Unto this people thou shalt say, Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I set before you the way of life, and the way of death.” —Jeremiah 21:8

SELECTED SCRIPTURE: Jeremiah 19:1-4,10,11; 21:1,2,8-10

DURING THE REIGN of King Josiah of Judah (659-628 B.C.), God called Jeremiah as a young man, to become one of the major prophets of Israel. “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.”—Jer. 1:5

His ministry covered the period during the reigns of Judah’s last three kings: Josiah, Jehoiakim, and Zedekiah. He lived to see some of his prophecies fulfilled in the destruction and exile of Israel at the hand of the Babylonians.

He also foretold the return of the Jews from Babylonian captivity, and from their later dispersion to their homeland after Jesus’ death.—Jer. 32:36-44

Jeremiah has often been called the ‘Prophet of Doom’, and in our Key Verse we see that his pronouncement to the children of Israel was indeed a foreboding one. The Chaldean forces were approaching Jerusalem, and King Zedekiah had sent Pashur, and Zephaniah the priest, to seek the Lord’s protection.

There was no hope for the city, however, and Jeremiah reveals that it is God’s will for Babylonian troops to destroy Jerusalem. The prophet urges the people, including the king, to surrender to the Chaldeans rather than attempt to remain in the city, for it would surely be besieged and destroyed. Chances of survival by staying in the city were slim. Those who remained would either die by the sword, or by famine and pestilence, but whoever left the city and surrendered to the Chaldeans would live. Their options were simple, even as the Lord had said: ‘Behold, I set before you the way of life, and the way of death’, our key verse.

The prophet was told to obtain an earthen vessel and to take it, along with the elders of the people, and elders of the priests, to the valley of the son of Hinnom, in the vicinity of Tophet. The elders were commanded to accompany Jeremiah to act as reliable witnesses to the events that were to follow.

Once in Hinnom the Lord instructed Jeremiah to tell the children of Israel that their city was to be destroyed because of their idolatrous ways. Hinnom was the notorious place where the fiendish custom of infant sacrifices was carried out, and heathen gods were worshiped with detestable rites.

The earthen bottle that Jeremiah had taken with him on this journey was to be used to illustrate God’s judgments upon Israel for their loathesome behavior.

God said, “Then shalt thou break the bottle in the sight of the men that go with thee, and shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaketh a potter’s vessel, that cannot be made whole again: and they shall bury them in Tophet, till there be no place to bury.”—Jer. 19:10,11

As the bottle was easily and irrecoverably broken, so would Judah and Jerusalem be broken by the invading Chaldean army. Tophet was selected as the place where God’s judgments were manifest to signify the forthcoming great slaughter. The Israelites had filled that valley with the slain which they had sacrificed to their ungodly idols.

How wonderful it will be when all false religious worship will end with the establishment of God’s kingdom, and God sets before all people, as he did before Israel: “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”—Deut. 30:19

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