Our Father Calls His House to Account
At the temple gate our Father tells worshipers that chanting the building's name protects no one. Shiloh was his place too, and he ruined it. What he wanted was justice for the foreigner, orphan and widow. Jeremiah is told not to pray for this people.
7 1The word that came to Jeremiah from our Father:
2Stand at the gate of our Father's house and proclaim there: Hear the word of our Father, all Judah who enter these gates to worship him. 3This is what the Father of heaven's armies, our Father of Israel, says: Change your ways and your deeds, and I will let you live in this place.
4Don't trust these deceptive words: 'our Father's temple! our Father's temple! our Father's temple!' 5If you truly change your ways and deeds, and truly deal justly with one another, 6if you do not oppress the foreigner, the orphan, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and do not follow other gods to your own harm, 7then I will let you live in this place, the land I gave your ancestors long ago, forever. 8But look—you are trusting in deceptive words that are worth nothing. 9Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, follow other gods you've not known, 10then come stand before me in this house that bears my name and say, 'We are safe!'—only to keep doing all these detestable things? 11Has this house that bears my name become a den of robbers in your eyes? I myself have seen it, declares our Father.
12Now go to my place that was in Shiloh, where I first set my name, and see what I did to it because of the evil of my people Israel. 13Now, because you did all this, declares our Father—I spoke to you again and again but you did not listen, called you but you did not answer,
14so I will do to the house called by my name, which you trust in, and to the place I gave you and your ancestors, as I did to Shiloh. 15I will throw you out of my sight, as I threw out all your relatives, all Ephraim's children. a a v15 Ephraim is shorthand for the northern kingdom of Israel, which Assyria carried into exile around 722 BC.
16You—do not pray for this people; raise no cry or prayer for them; do not plead with me, for I will not listen to you. 17Don't you see what they're doing in Judah's cities and Jerusalem's streets? 18Children gather wood, fathers light fire, women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven; they pour drink offerings to other gods to anger me. b b v18 The queen of heaven was a pagan goddess of fertility worshiped in the ancient Near East — the families were offering household devotion to her instead of to our Father. 19But am I the one they provoke? declares our Father. Is it not themselves, to their own shame?
20So the Sovereign Father says: my anger and rage will pour out on this place—on people and animals, on the field's trees and the ground's fruit—burning, never put out.
21This is what the Father of heaven's armies, our Father of Israel, says: Add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat yourselves! 22For on the day I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did not merely speak to them or command them about burnt offerings and sacrifices. 23This is what I commanded them: Obey my voice, and I will be your Father and you will be my children. Walk fully in the way I command you, so it may go well with you.
24But they did not listen or turn an ear; they walked by their own plans, their evil hearts stubborn, and went backward, not forward. 25From the day your ancestors left Egypt until now, I sent you all my servants the prophets, again and again, day after day. 26Yet they did not listen to me or pay attention, but were stubborn and did worse than their ancestors.
27You will speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you; you will call to them, but they will not answer you.
28Say to them: This is the nation that did not obey the voice of our Father or accept correction; truth has vanished, cut off from their lips. 29Cut off your hair and throw it away; wail on the bare heights, for our Father has rejected and abandoned the generation of his anger.
The Valley of Slaughter
30Judah has done evil in my sight, declares our Father. They set their detestable idols in the house that bears my name, making it unclean. 31They built Topheth's high places in the Valley of Ben-Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in the fire—which I never commanded, and it never entered my mind. c c v31 Topheth was a site in the Valley of Ben-Hinnom south of Jerusalem where children were sacrificed; the valley later gave rise to the word 'Gehenna.' 32So the days are coming, declares our Father, when it will no longer be called Topheth or the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; they will bury in Topheth until no room is left. 33This people's dead bodies will feed the birds of the sky and the animals of the earth, with no one to scare them off. 34I will silence in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem the sound of joy and rejoicing, the voice of bridegroom and bride, for the land will become a wasteland.
