Radical surgery: the necessity to die (Jer 19:1-20:6)

I must admit that this chapter is grim, unrelieved by any hope. Judgment is inevitable, the people are hardened, the disaster prophesied for so long can no longer be avoided. We would like to see a happy ending, another chance given, but for Judah this is the end of the road. It reminds me of the diagnosis of cancer. For some in the early stages, it is possible to cut out the tumour, to get rid of the traces by radiation or chemotherapy, but the more the cancerous growth spreads and takes hold, the smaller the chance of survival. Who doesn’t know a relative or friend whose illness was too far gone and there was nothing that could be done to save them? This is Judah’s story.

The smashed jar and its meaning

Jeremiah is told to buy an earthenware jar (the Hebrew baqbuq refers to a water or wine jar and the word is onomatopoeic imitating the gurgling sound of liquid when poured out; Jer 19:1). He is to take the senior leadership through the southern Potsherd Gate (possibly the later Dung Gate) to the Hinnom Valley, where the city’s rubbish dump was, the path probably littered with broken pottery. Although not mentioned, Jeremiah may have emptied out the contents of the jar first as a visual display of the leaders’ plans being ‘made void’ (the Hebrew baqaq ‘to empty’ plays on the word for jar, baqbuq; Jer 19:7). The city’s destruction is then described including cannibalism, common in siege warfare when starvation was used to wear resistance down (Jer 19:9; Lam 4:10 cf. 2 Kings 6:28-29). The valley where Jeremiah stood with the elders and priests would be piled with corpses (Jer 19:6). Unlike clay that could be remoulded, a finished jar was hardened into shape (like Judah’s attitude) and its smashing indicated that disaster was now irreversible (Jer 19:10-11).

The people’s attitude

The reason is clear: Judah has worshipped idols, worse still, they sacrificed their own children to other gods (Jer 19:4-5). Although the leadership’s reaction is not given, Pashhur’s response is meant to illustrate their attitude. As priest and chief officer (of the temple police, see description in Jer 29:26), he resisted the message and had Jeremiah beaten and put in the stocks, which restrained movement of the neck or feet (Jer 20:1-2). Pashhur’s antagonism symbolised the people’s and his new name was a sign not only of his fate but those with a similar attitude (Jer 20:3-6).[1]

The necessity of death

We may wonder, however, what the point was of telling Judah again about judgment when the future was inevitable? It showed that God wanted His people to understand and be accountable. Even when disaster is certain, how we go through it makes a difference and Judah demonstrated that they clung to false hopes and cheap grace to the end (see the last king’s inquiry during the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in Jer 21:2). Moreover, those who later survived and lived in exile in Babylon may have wondered if God’s patience ran out too soon, if there could have been a different solution. The story makes it abundantly clear that rebellion against God was so entrenched that only death (that of a nation, if not all individuals) could eliminate the problem.

There is a principle here worth reflecting on. When sin, like cancer, takes hold, only death can destroy it. The trouble is that as the gallows humour puts it, the operation was sure successful except the patient died – which is no help at all. However, death is not the end for the God of Life, and He raised up the nation again (Ezek 37:11-14). For Christians, final redemption from sin will not be complete until we die physically (and are raised to new life; 1 Cor 15:42-50). In the meantime, we symbolically die to sin little by little as we turn away from a way of life that displeases God so we might live for Him (Rom 6:6-14). Whether we shed an overanxious nature, bursts of sudden anger, a temperament that tries to control others, a struggle with bitterness or any number of sinful habits, the process is painful and often slow. Yet, we work out our salvation with God’s help who is at work in us (Phil 2:12-13).

---

[1] William L. Holladay explains that the name is a play on words. In Aramaic, the lingua franca of the day, Pashhur sounds like pash-sehor meaning ‘fruitful all around’. The new Hebrew name, Magor–missabib is usually translated as ‘terror all around’, but magor may also mean ‘attack’ or ‘sojourning’ (i.e. living in a foreign land) and Jeremiah refers to all three aspects in his judgment speech (Jer 20:4-6). Thus ‘all around’ may also have the sense here of terror ‘from every point of view’. Jeremiah 1: A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, Chapters 1-25, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1986), 543-44.

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with others.