Jeremiah’s First Trip to the Potter (18:1-23): Though observed by Jeremiah rather than performed by Jeremiah, we now hear of another prophetic action that illustrates the prophet’s verbal message. Jeremiah 18:1–4 narrates the action while 18:5–10 interprets the general significance of the action. Verses 11–12 apply the teaching of the general principle specifically to Judah and Judah’s negative response to God’s call for repentance. A poetic oracle registering surprise at the people’s unwillingness to change follows along with a statement of their coming destruction (vv. 13–17). A plot against Jeremiah motivated by the people’s distaste for these negative oracles is disclosed (v. 18), and finally another lament of Jeremiah (vv. 19–23), bemoaning the plots against him and calling on God to punish the plotters.
18:1–4 God begins by telling Jeremiah to go to the house of the potter where God will give the prophet a message. Jeremiah responds obediently and observes the potter at work. The basic method of throwing a pot is the same today as it was in antiquity. The potter would place a clay on a wheel and as it revolved would use his hands to mold the clay into a useful shape. However, on this occasion things did not go according to plan, and the hoped-for pot was misshapen. The remedy was easy enough: start over again. We are to imagine that the potter took the misshapen pot, smashed it down again, and then molded it into another pot.
18:5–10 As promised, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, and we next hear the divine oracle delivered on this occasion. It is addressed to the house of Israel and challenges them to consider themselves like the clay and the potter to be like God. The language of the oracle here changes, but the implication is clear. God is sovereign over the nations and particularly over Israel (here standing for Judah). If he perceives that the pot, which is Israel, is misshapen (that is, sinful), then he can crush it and start over. The language by which the oracle continues goes back to Jeremiah’s commission in Jeremiah 1:10, where God appoints Jeremiah “over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow.” On the other hand, and again reverting to the language of Jeremiah 1:10, God can also choose that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted.
However, these decisions are conditional upon the response of the nations and kingdoms. If those announced for judgment repent or those who are established sin, then all bets are off.
18:11–12 Germane to Judah and Jerusalem in this oracle is the former condition, namely repentance. Because of their sins, they are now marked for judgment. But if they repent, then disaster can be averted. God calls on them to repent, to turn away from their sins and avert the coming judgment.
However, Judah will have none of it. They persist in their sins. In language surely put into the mouths of the inhabitants of Judah in order to state what their actions demonstrated, we hear them say: It’s no use. We will continue with our own plans; each of us will follow the stubbornness of his evil heart (v. 12).
18:13–17 The next section begins with therefore (laken) indicating that the following divine oracle is in reaction to the refusal to repent of the previous verse. In a word, God registers consternation at their stubbornness, followed by a renewed commitment to punish them.
Not even the pagan nations have ever heard of such a thing. That thing is substituting false gods (idols) for the true God. The nations do not betray their (false) gods. Such a situation is described as a most horrible thing (shaʿarurit). A variant form of this word (shaʿarurah) is used in Jeremiah 5:30 and 23:14 in reference to prophets giving false prophecies. Virgin Israel, a term of continuing endearment, has done the unexpected by worshiping false deities and refusing to repent.
The unexpected should not happen. Snow is always on the rocky slopes of the high mountains of Lebanon. Cool water always flows from distant sources. And Israel should repent and worship the one true God, but it doesn’t!
They have forgotten God, which means they do not worship and obey him. Rather they participate in idolatrous worship rituals. They burn incense to other gods. In this way, they have stumbled on the ancient paths and have taken side roads. The metaphor of the path reminds the reader of the two-path theology of Proverbs (see Longman, Proverbs, pp. 59–61). The path is the journey of life. Walking on the ancient paths would signify living according the Yahwistic tradition, while taking the bypaths would be cutting a new way. The last colon of verse 15 underlines this last point by referring to the paths as roads not built up. Of course, one cannot travel well on such ill-formed roads.
Thus, the final two verses of the oracle move to judgment. God declares that their land will be laid waste. Though not specified, this certainly refers to the destruction of Judah by the Babylonian army. As a result, they will be the object of scorn or ridicule.
God then says he will be like a wind from the east, the sirocco with its tremendous, life-sapping heat. By showing them his back rather than his face, he indicates that he will depart from them during the day of their disaster, when the punishment comes. They will see his back as he walks away from them to let them suffer the consequences in his absence.
18:18 All of a sudden we hear from “they,” clearly a reference to the people who were the recipients of the pronouncement of divine judgment delivered by Jeremiah. They plot against him. They will verbally attack him, probably by undermining his reputation, plus they will ignore what he says. Of course, what is most damaging to them is that they pay no attention to the charge of sin he has leveled against them and will not respond to his call to repentance.
Their reasoning is fascinating and often commented on because it seems to list three functionaries who are pivotal in teaching the people the will of Yahweh. These three groups include the priest, the wise teacher, and the prophet. Of further interest is the association between these three and their respective media of divine revelation. The priest is associated with the law, charged to teach the people the law from the moment of its and their inception (Deut. 33:10). The wisdom teacher is associated with counsel. This description of the wise is consonant with that we get in the book of Proverbs. They are able to give advice to others. Finally, the prophet has the word, short for the word of God. The prophets speak oracles given to them by God. As the people reject Jeremiah and his message, they encourage each other by saying that they still have these vehicles of divine revelation. Get rid of Jeremiah and there will still be a conduit to the divine. However, the broader context of Jeremiah leads us to believe that these priests, sages, and prophets are not legitimate; rather, they say only what the people themselves want to hear.
18:19–23 Jeremiah responds to this plotting by accusing them before Yahweh. Jeremiah thus utters another of his laments or confessions (11:18–12:6; 15:10–11, 15–21; 17:14–18; 20:7–13, 14–18). He first calls Yahweh’s attention to these plotting words. He has done good for them, by preaching God’s message to them and giving them the opportunity of repentance, which would spare them from punishment. But they repay this good with evil. They seek to undermine the prophet, a fate described as digging a pit. It is as if Jeremiah is walking on the path of life but that these wicked people have set a trap, a pit into which he will fall.
But Jeremiah has done more than speak God’s words of warning and issued the call to repentance to them. He has also come before God and prayed on their behalf. In so doing, Jeremiah has fulfilled the intercessory role of the prophet. The prophet was charged with appealing to God on behalf of the people as well as presenting God’s judgment to them. We can see this with Abraham (Gen. 20:7), Moses (Exod. 33:12–23), Samuel (1 Sam. 12:3), and others.
Since they have responded to Jeremiah’s good with such evil, his prayer of intercession on behalf of the people turns into an imprecatory prayer, asking for God’s judgment against them. The language that follows is similar to the curses of the psalms calling for the destruction of the enemy. First, he asks that God allow their children to experience famine and that they themselves will be struck down by the sword. In this way, their wives will become grieving widows. Of course, the content of these curses fit well with the coming punishment since it describes the aftermath of a battle like that which Judah will experience at the hands of the Babylonians.
Additional Notes
18:13 Schmitt (“The Virgin of Israel: Referent and Use of the Phrase in Amos and Jeremiah,” CBQ 53 [1991], pp. 365–87) has made the argument that Virgin Israel should be understood in a construct genitival relationship, thus “Virgin of Israel,” and as a specific reference to the city of Jerusalem, not the entirety of Israel (see also 31:4, 21).
A Clay Jar: Judgment against Topheth (19:1--20:6): Jeremiah 18 narrates a trip to the potter where a lesson is drawn from the relationship between the potter and the clay he molds into a vessel. No chronological relationship is explicit between chapters 18 and 19 and the sequence may simply be the result of the common theme of the potter. In this passage, however, Jeremiah purchases a finished pot and takes it to the valley of Ben Hinnom, also known as Topheth, where horrible and idolatrous rituals were performed. He identifies the pot as symbolic of the apostate nation of Israel and then smashes it. This ritual reminds us of the Egyptian execration texts. These are texts on which the names of Egypt’s enemies were written and then smashed in anticipation of the destruction of the nations themselves. Walton (IVPBBCOT, p. 656) also notes a possible literary connection that goes back to the Sumerian Lament over the Destruction of Sumer and Ur which compares the citizens of destroyed Ur to broken pots (“Its people like potsherds littered its sides” [COS 1:163, 536, line 211]). After speaking at Topheth itself, Jeremiah returns to the temple where he also speaks of Judah’s coming judgment. Finally, in response especially to Jeremiah’s speech at the temple, a priestly official, Pashhur has the prophet beaten. As a result, Jeremiah delivers a judgment speech against Pashhur and takes the opportunity to deliver yet one more oracle against Judah.
19:1–6 The chapter begins with the divine directive to Jeremiah to purchase a clay jar from the potter. The clay jar may be more specifically a flask (the Hebrew term baqbuq) may be onomatopoetic for the sound that liquid would make coming out of the vessel (NIDOTTE, vol. 2, p. 655). The clay jar will be a prop for yet another prophetic symbolic action. He takes the elders of the people and the priests out to the Valley of Ben Hinnom. That he could convince these important individuals in Judean society to accompany him indicates that Jeremiah was something of a force to be reckoned with and could not be easily ignored.
For the Valley of Ben Hinnom see commentary on Jer. 7:30–34. We do not know the Potsherd Gate except in this one occasion, but the name describes broken pieces of pots littering the exit to the “dump.” The gate may have gone by a variety of names including the Dung Gate (Neh. 2:13; 3:13, 14; 12:31).
Upon his arrival at this location, God instructed Jeremiah to deliver an oracle that announces a future, horrible punishment upon the people. It is so bad that it will make the ears of everyone who hears it tingle. The reason for the punishment is given as idolatry and the reason for the choice of this location for the delivery of the oracle is now clear. This place has been dedicated to the worship of foreign deities, in particular to Baal. Specifically, they have offered their own children as sacrifices to their false god here.
In the context of the announcement of judgment, we hear a second name for this place, Topheth (see also Jer. 7:30–34). This word in Hebrew means “spit” and is clearly a pejorative name expressing contempt for the place. It is of great interest to note that 2 Kings 23:10 tells us that Topheth was desecrated during the reforms of Josiah. “He desecrated Topheth, which was in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, so no one could use it to sacrifice his son or daughter in the fire to Molech.” Here, the child sacrifice is associated with Molech rather than Baal, but the principle is the same. Since Jeremiah is speaking this judgment speech at least in part to the kings of Judah (19:3), it suggests that Jehoiakim rebuilt the place and started using it again. Whatever its name—Topheth or Valley of Hinnom—Yahweh through Jeremiah announces a name change. In the future it will be called the Valley of Slaughter. The slaughter will be that of the Judeans who practice such horrific rites. This prophetic judgment has already been narrated in 7:30–34 and the theme will be revisited in 32:35.
19:7–9 In these verses Jeremiah continues to relate Yahweh’s judgment against his apostate people. He will ruin their plans. The plans probably point to their intention to continue worshiping false gods and offering child sacrifice to them, perhaps as a misguided attempt to stave off disaster. He will frustrate these plans by allowing their enemies (who will turn out to be the Babylonians) to have victory over them. They will meet the most horrible of ends. They will not only die in battle, but they will not even receive proper burial. Their bodies instead will be exposed on the battlefield and be picked at by birds and animals of prey. In other words, God will use his creatures, both their human enemies as well as the animals of land and air, to accomplish his judgment. But it is not only the death of the ungodly people of Judah that will result; the city of Jerusalem itself will be destroyed. Those who hear about it will be horrified and speak poorly of the city, which at a better time was “beautiful in its loftiness, and the joy of the whole earth” (Ps. 48:2). Finally, Jeremiah, on behalf of God, describes the horrors of the coming siege. The inhabitants of the city will run out of food and then eat their children (see 2 Kgs. 6:24–31, for such a description during an earlier siege) and then one another. From 2 Kings 25:1–7, we learn that the siege began against Jerusalem on January 15, 588 B.C. (Hebrew translates: “on the tenth day of the tenth month of the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign”) and did not end till all the food ran out on July 18, 586 B.C. (by the ninth day of the fourth month of Zedekiah’s eleventh year; see also Jeremiah 52:6).
19:10–13 At this point Jeremiah was to take the jar and smash it. This action anticipates what will happen to the city and its citizens. They too will be smashed through an act of divine judgment. Jeremiah also makes the point that the defilement caused by idolatry is not just restricted to Topheth, this location of child sacrifice outside the city, but extends to the entirety of Jerusalem. As a result, God will make Jerusalem like Topheth, a place of ruin. After all it was not just at Topheth that they burned incense on the roofs to all the starry hosts and poured out drink offerings to other gods.
19:14–15 The chapter ends with Jeremiah leaving Topheth after the prophetic action of breaking the clay jar that represented Judah, and delivering a brief related oracle to all the people at the court of the LORD’s temple. In this way, the audience for his words expands. By standing on ground made holy by the Lord’s presence, Jeremiah’s words grow in solemnity.
The oracle is not only brief, it is to the point. God will bring on Jerusalem and its surrounding villages every disaster I pronounced against them. Whether this previous pronouncement points immediately to words that Jeremiah has already spoken to the people specifying siege, defeat, death, exile, or whether it refers to the divine words pronounced in covenant curses such as those found in Deuteronomy 28 is beside the point. The former derives from the latter. The stated purpose is also straightforward. The people have not obeyed God’s words as they have been stated through the law.
20:1–6 The text now narrates the reaction of a powerful official (chief officer in the temple of the LORD) to Jeremiah’s judgment speech, most likely the one just delivered in the temple precincts. This official is named Pashhur, the son (in the sense of descendant) of Immer. We know from the genealogy of 1 Chronicles 9:12 that Pashhur was a priest himself. He is not the same Pashhur as in Jeremiah 21:1.
Priests were guardians of the holy space (Longman, Immanuel in Our Place, pp. 117–60), and so Pashhur was surely within his rights to punish someone whom he thought was a false prophet (Deut. 17:12). However, since Jeremiah’s prophecy was not false, the story condemns Pashhur. It does so by having Jeremiah deliver a personal judgment speech against the priest. He renames Pashhur, Magor-Missabib. The new name means “terror on every side,” and is an expression used eight other times in Psalms, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. “Such an expression depicts a hopeless state of terror where survival itself is threatened” (NIDOTTE, vol. 1, p. 840). This encompassing horror will not only be the experience of Pashhur, but of all of Judah. Pashhur thus embodies the sins and will illustrate the punishments that come on the land of Judah as a whole. This oracle is significant because it is the first specification of Babylon as the instrument of God’s judgment. Elsewhere permutations like “foe from the north” are used.
Additional Notes
19:7 There is a sound play between I will ruin (baqqoti) and the word for clay jar (baqbuq), which seems intentional (Lundbom, Jeremiah 1–20, p. 836; Fretheim, Jeremiah, p. 283).