Jeremiah19chapter 19

This is the workshop lesson turned around. In chapter 18 the clay is wet and can be reworked. Here the prophet buys a finished, fired jug — a narrow-necked water flask named in Hebrew for the gurgling sound it made when poured — and smashes it. Fired pottery cannot be recycled. That is the message.

The location was chosen. The valley of Hinnom runs along the south side of Jerusalem, and the Potsherd Gate at its head appears to have been the gate where broken pottery from the nearby workshops was dumped — the city's rubbish exit. He walks the leaders out through the rubbish gate and breaks the jug on the tip.

Topheth, in that valley, was the site where children had been burned in sacrifice to Baal and Molech. The chapter calls it what it was: they built high places to burn their sons in the fire. The Law had condemned the practice absolutely; the archaeology of Phoenician colonies elsewhere in the Mediterranean shows the same rite was practised in that wider culture.

He takes elders and senior priests with him as witnesses. That was legal procedure. A public act done before named witnesses of standing could not later be denied.