The day of Judah's overwhelming judgment was set, and the time of it drew on apace; yet the offer of mercy to the wicked (if they would but avail themselves of it!) must go out again, though it should fall upon utterly deaf ears (verses 1-7). How like to our own days is this! Heedless of the call of God, the mass of mankind hasten on to certain judgment, now assuredly near at hand, wherein not one nation only, but the whole world will meet the King of Kings Who once outside Jerusalem's walls, as the crucified One, offered Himself to God, bearing,—as every believer can say in the language of faith and of Scripture,—our sins in His own body on the cross.
We note here also, another parallel with our own times, that while refusing the gospel message of that day, and going on in their own perverted ways, the profession of the worship of God was kept up; the priests and the Levites, though not spoken of here, must have been at their appointed posts, carrying on the forms of religious observance. What did they think of the solitary member of the priestly family (Jeremiah was, he tells us at the beginning, a priest) and his message, who stood in the gate of the temple grounds faithfully witnessing for his Master? 2 Timothy 3:55Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. (2 Timothy 3:5) gives us a word for the character of empty religious profession in Jeremiah's day as well as in on-own times for which it was written.
Was indeed Jehovah's house become a den of thieves (verse 11)? This passag we doubt not was in the Lord's mind. when He cast out the tradesmen and money-changers from the temple which Herod built (Matthew 21:1313And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves. (Matthew 21:13)). Shiloli was a witness (verses 12-15) that the name of Jehovah may not be connected with wickedness. (See Psalm 78:60,60So that he forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent which he placed among men; (Psalm 78:60) and 1. Samuel 1-4). The ark of the testimony which had been placed there when the land was possessed by the children of Israel (Joshua 18) never returned to Shiloh after this, and the last mention of the place, aside from the Psalms and Jeremiah's prophecy, is in 1 Kings 14. The place was within the boundaries of the tribe of Ephraim, 20 or more miles north of Jerusalem, and so was included in the territory of the ten tribes of Israel who had been removed as captives by the Assyrians a hundred years before Jeremiah's time.
All were alike, the children, the fathers, the mothers (verse 18),—turned from God to the service of idols; the "queen of heaven'', object of their worship, appears to have been the Canaanite goddess Ashtoreth. or Astarte, the moon. What a hopeless scene it must have been, in which Jeremiah was left to testify for God! But He will never be without witnesses until the day of mercy is finally closed upon this guilty world, and the final act of judgment opens upon the unrepentant.
Jeremiah was to speak for God, though assured in advance that his hearers would disregard his message (verse 27) . The high places of Topheth in the valley of the son of Hinnom, where the worship of a false god reached its height in burning their sons and daughters in the fire, was chosen by God as the at valley of slaughter, an emblem of the eternal judgment in the lake of fire. The Greek word "Gehenna", translated "hell" in Luke 12:55But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him. (Luke 12:5) and other passages in Matthew, Mark and James, and referring to the place of everlasting punishment for the lost, is derived from the Hebrew words for "valley of Hinnom".