“Behold, you trust in lying words that cannot profit. (Jeremiah 7:8)
When we believe the right words it can profit us
But go now to My place which was in Shiloh, where I set My name at the first, and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of My people Israel: (Jeremiah 7:12)
Shiloh was the central city of Israel – the religious centre – for almost 400 years. It was the place where the tabernacle of meeting and the altar of God stayed for this long period. However, due to the wickedness of Eli’s sons, God was angry with the people and the Ark of God was captured by the Philistines. Shiloh was reduced to ruins.
Even today, many cities are filled with empty churches; these are like Shiloh – places where God was once worshipped and honored, but no more.
This lesson should be engraved on our hearts: no matter how much spiritual progress, or privilege, or glory one might have, it can all be turned to nothing if we stop listening to God and cultivating our relationship with Him.
The children gather wood, the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven: (Jeremiah 7:18)
The idolatry of Judah and Jerusalem was a family affair. Each member of the family had their own role to play in honouring pagan gods such as the queen of heaven.
The ‘queen of heaven’ was the Babylonian Ishtar, identified with the planet Venus, whose worship, similar to the cults of the Canaanite goddesses, Asherah, Ashtaroth and Anath
Mary is sometimes given the title ‘The Queen of Heaven.’ This title should set off alarm bells for anyone who knows the book of Jeremiah.
For I did not speak to your fathers, or command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices: (Jeremiah 7:22)
When God gave Israel the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai, there was nothing about sacrifice or priesthood. That only came later, once Israel had accepted the covenant (Exodus 24:1-8). The point is clear: God’s first priority for Israel was obedience, and sacrifice and the priesthood were secondary.
This is much the same thought as 1 Samuel 15:22: Then Samuel said: “Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, As in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams.
They have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and daughters in the fire: (Jeremiah 7:31)
Worse than the idolatry in the temple was the actual human sacrifice carried out right in the region of Jerusalem.
The high places: “The ‘high places’ of Biblical times were not always very high. These particular high places, for example, were down in a valley. It was an inaccessible rocky ravine south and west of the City of Jerusalem. But a ‘high place’ is a shrine, a raised platform built out of stones for the purpose of worship.”
The Valley of the Son of Hinnom lies south of the temple mount in Jerusalem. It was used as both a garbage dump (with continually smoldering fires) and a place of child sacrifice.
“Ahaz, King of Israel, sacrificed his own son in the fire (2 Kings 16:3). The same thing happened in Manasseh’s day, when children were sacrificed to the gods of Canaan (2 Kings 21:6
Which I did not command, nor did it come into My heart:
Unlike many of the Canaanite deities, Yahweh never commanded human sacrifice. God could say that it never did come into His heart to ask such a thing; it totally went against His nature.
The incident of Abraham’s interrupted sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22) was an emphatic way for God to say, “I do not want human sacrifice.”
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