Jer 19.1-15 is a confirmation about the destruction of Jerusalem in the coming siege. The potter’s had their houses outside the city due to the smoke and fires, so Jeremiah is told to go outside the Potter’s Gate. This is where the Hinnom Valley connects with the Kidron Valley. This is a major prophecy and this area is also called Tophet and a picture of Gehenna.
v 1…Thus says the Lord, “Go and buy a potter’s earthenware jar (ancient “tupperware” which is earthly and natural), and take some of the elders of the people and some of the senior priests (as witnesses);
v 2…Then go out to the valley of Ben-hinnom, which is by the entrance to the potsherd gate (the potter’s gate south of the city so wind could blow the smoke away from the city to the east) and proclaim there the words that I shall tell you,
v 3…and say, “Hear the word of the Lord (Yehovah), O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem (both groups were guilty of idolatry in this valley), thus says the Lord of hosts (Yehovah Tzavaot), the God of Israel, “Behold (take note) I am about to bring a clamity upon this place (Jerusalem), at which the ears of everyone that hears of it will tingle.
v 4…Because they have forsaken me and have made this an alien place and have burned sacrifices in it to other gods that neither they nor their forefathers nor the kings of Judah had ever known (the godly ones), and because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent (they burned their children to Molech and Baal. We “burn” our children when we don’t tell them about Yehovah and Yeshua and they die unconverted; don’t teach the truth),
v 5…and they have built the high places (bamot) to Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, a thing which I never commanded or spoke of, nor did it ever enter my mind (these bamot were near to the tomb of Annas or Chanan, which has been found. He was the high priest who was involved in the death of Yeshua. This whole idea was loathsome to Yehovah);
v 6…therefore, behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when this place will no longer be called Tophet (“spitting” and this was a burial place of the ashes of the children burned. This area is where the three valleys come together-Jer 7.27-34; Rev 19.17-18; Ezek 29.1-7; 32.1-8; Luke 17.33; Matt 13.30-41, 24.28) or the the valley of Ben-hinnom, but rather the valley of Slaughter (and will also be called the valley of Yehoshaphat-Joel 3.1-12).
v 7…And I will make void (empty) the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place (all their schemes for deliverance through their false gods will be as empty as the earthenware jar he had in his hand), and I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies and by the hand of those who seek their life; and I shall give over their carcasses as food for the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth (see verses listed in v 6; this is an idiom for a great slaughter and this also alludes to the feast of Leviathan at the end of the birth-pains between Tishri 10-15 after Yeshua returns-Matt 25.31-46).
v 8…I shall also make this city a desolation and an object of hissing (sneering); everyone who passes by it will be astonished and hiss because of all its disasters (the plagues that Yehovah brought).
v 9…And I shall make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters (cannibalism predicted in Lev 26.29; Deut 28.53), and they will eat one another’s flesh in the siege and in the distress with which their enemies and those who seek their life will distress them (this also happened in 70 A.D. during the Roman siege).”
v 10…”Then you are to break the jar in the sight of the men who accompany you (because they are broken and beyond repair also)
v 11…and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, “Just so shall I break this people and this city, even as one breaks a potter’s vessel, which cannot be repaired; and they will bury in Tophet (an unclean place) because (until) there is no other place for burial (the trash of Jerusalem was taken there and this area became a picture of Gehenna).
v 12…This is how I shall treat this place and its inhabitants,” declares the Lord, “so as to make this city like Tophet.
v 13…And the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will be defiled like the place Tophet because of all the houses on whose rooftops they burned sacrifices (incense) to all the heavenly host (sun, moon, stars) and poured out libations to their gods.”
v 14…Then Jeremiah came from Tophet (the most cursed place on earth and where the high priest Annas and Caiaphas were buried) where the Lord had sent him to prophesy; and he stood in the court of the Lord’s house and said to all the people (what he just told the elders and the priests);
v 15…”Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, ‘Behold (see for yourself), I am about to bring on this city and all its towns the entire calamity that I have declared against it, because they have stiffened their necks (to not accept the yoke of the Torah and become lawless) so as not to heed my words.”
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