Jeremiah 19
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CHAPTER 19
The Breaking of the Clay Jar (19:1–15)
1–6 The Lord asks Jeremiah to bring a clay jar (verse 1) and then break it in the presence of Judah’s leaders (verse 10). The breaking of the jar will serve as a sign of the coming destruction of Judah and Jerusalem.69 There is an important difference between the clay jar of this chapter and the marred pot of the previous chapter (Jeremiah 18:4): here the jar is already hardened and cannot be remade; the “marred pot” was still pliable and therefore could be remolded. The “pot” symbolizes sinners for whom there is still time to repent; the “jar” symbolizes sinners for whom it is too late to repent. Now, for Judah, it was too late; the people were spiritually hardened and could not be reshaped.
Jeremiah was told to act out the sign of the broken jar at a place called Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom near Jerusalem, where child sacrifices were carried out (see Jeremiah 7:30–34 and comment). In this valley the blood of the innocent had been shed (verse 4), especially during the long reign of Manasseh (2 Kings 21:16).
7–9 In these verses the Lord (through Jeremiah) announces the punishment He has decreed for Judah and Jerusalem. During the siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, people will be so hungry that they will eat each other—even their own children (verse 4); this desperate hunger was one of the punishments Moses said would be given to those who disobeyed God’s covenant commands (see Leviticus 26:29; Lamentations 2:20).
10–15 Jeremiah is instructed to break the clay jar in the Valley of Hinnom in order to reinforce his message of judgment (verses 10–11). The judgment is this: Jerusalem will be defiled just as Topheth had been defiled (verses 12–13); Topheth had been desecrated by King Josiah, who turned it into Jerusalem’s garbage dump (2 Kings 23:10). The breaking of the clay jar would be a sign to the people that God’s judgment was irrevocable. The major sin that brought on this judgment was idolatry, the worship of the starry hosts (sun, moon and stars) and of other gods (verse 13).
In verses 14–15, Jeremiah is told to announce this judgment in the temple court before all the people. After making this announcement, Jeremiah quickly en countered trouble himself, as we shall see in the next chapter.