Jeremiah 7:29 - Meaning and Application

Here is a strong call to weeping and mourning. Jerusalem, once a joyful city and the joy of the whole earth, must now raise a cry on the high places (Jeremiah 7:29). Those were the very places where they had served their idols, so there they must now lament their misery. As a sign of grief and shame, Jerusalem must cut off her hair and throw it away. That language points to the hair of Nazarites, people set apart to God, whose hair was a sign of their dedication, almost like a crown.

Jerusalem had once been like a city set apart to God, but now she must cut off her hair and be humiliated. She must be treated as unclean and separated from God, just as she had once been separated for him. When people lose holiness, they have lost the right to rejoice in the way they once did.

The cause for this mourning is very plain. The sin of Jerusalem was especially evil in God’s sight, and nothing made it worse than this idol worship (Jeremiah 7:30). The children of Judah, God’s covenant people who came from Judah, did evil right before him, in his very presence. They offended him openly, face to face, which made the sin far more serious. They did what they knew was evil, and what was deeply hateful to him. Idolatry stood above all other sins as evil in God’s sight.

Two things made their idolatry especially provoking. First, they were bold and defiant toward God. They set their disgusting idols, along with the altars built for them, in the house called by God’s name, in the temple courts, to defile it. Manasseh, a king of Judah, had done this before (2 Kings 21:7; 2 Kings 23:12). It was as if they thought God would ignore it, or as if they could join God and Baal together. But if sin takes the first place in the heart, that heart becomes a polluted temple. God is especially offended when idols are set up in the heart itself (Ezekiel 14:4).

Second, they were cruel beyond words toward their own children (Jeremiah 7:31). They built the high places of Tophet, where the image of Moloch was set up, in the Valley of Ben Hinnom near Jerusalem. There they burned their sons and daughters in the fire, killing them in the most brutal way, in order to honor or appease false gods that were really demons, not gods. This shows the terrible power of Satan in those who disobey God, and it shows how deeply human nature can be corrupted. It is shocking that people could become so numb that they would burn their own innocent children, and think it right, even pleasing to God or their idols.

This was surely a righteous judgment. They had exchanged the glory of God for the likeness of a beast, and God gave them over to evil desires that made them worse than beasts. God says this was something he did not command, and never even entered his heart. That does not mean he had not forbidden the worship of Moloch, because he had clearly forbidden it. It means he had never required his worshipers to go to such lengths, or to violate their natural love for their children in his service. It never entered his heart to receive children as sacrifices. Yet they had left his worship for gods that, by commanding such things, showed themselves to be enemies of mankind.

The destruction of Jerusalem was just as terrible as her sin was great. The Lord had rejected and abandoned the generation that had become the generation of his wrath (Jeremiah 7:29). Sin can turn those who were once the generation of God’s love into the generation of his anger. God will reject and forsake those who make themselves fit for destruction. He will disown them as his own, saying, “I do not know you.” He will also leave them to the terror of their own guilt.

Death would triumph over them (Jeremiah 7:32-33). Sin rules until death, because death is its wage and final result. Tophet, the valley beside Jerusalem, would be called the Valley of Slaughter, because many would be killed there. Some would die when they tried to flee the city and ran into the hands of the enemy. Others would be brought there for burial, because no other burial places would remain. This shows how many would die by sword, disease, and famine. Death would march on in power and terrifying display.

The valley of Tophet had once been a place where Jerusalem’s people walked for fresh air. Now it would be spoiled for that use, because it would be filled with graves. No one could walk there without risk of ceremonial uncleanness from touching a grave. It was also the place where they had sacrificed some of their children and given others to Moloch, and there they would now fall as victims of God’s justice. Tophet had once been used as a place to bury, or burn, the dead bodies of the Assyrian army when an angel defeated them, as Isaiah had said long before (Isaiah 30:33). They had forgotten that mercy and turned the place into a site of sin, so God would make it their burial place instead.

In the New Testament, hell is called Gehenna, which means the Valley of Hinnom, because that valley had been linked both with the buried Assyrians and with rebellious Judah. In that sense, hell is a place after death for both unbelievers and hypocrites, for open enemies of God’s church and for false friends of it. It is the gathering place of the dead, prepared for the generation of God’s wrath. The slaughter would be so great that even the wide valley of Tophet would not hold all the slain. In the end, there would not be enough living people left to bury the dead, so their bodies would become food for birds and wild animals. No one would be bold enough to scare them away, as Rizpah did from the bodies of Saul’s sons (2 Samuel 21:10).

Thus the law and the prophets agree, and the judgment matches both. Giving the dead a decent burial is an act of human kindness, because it remembers that the body once served as the home of a reasonable soul.

It is also a deep truth about judgment, based on what the dead body will be like at the resurrection. The absence of burial has sometimes shown the rage of men against God’s witnesses (Revelation 11:9). Here, it is threatened as a sign of God’s anger against his enemies, and it hints that evil follows sinners even after death.

Joy will also disappear from them (Jeremiah 7:34). Then God says, “I will stop the sound of joy.” He had already called them, through his prophets and through lesser judgments, to weeping and sorrow. But they went against him and wanted to hear only about joy and gladness (Isaiah 22:12-13). What came of that? Now God called them to mourning (Jeremiah 7:29), and he made that call work, leaving them with neither reason nor desire for joy.

Those who will not weep will weep. Those whom God’s grace does not cure of empty pleasure will, by his justice, be deprived of all pleasure. When God judges, he will prevail. Here he threatens to take away everything that could bring joy. There will be no joy of weddings, no gladness, because there will be no marriages. The comforts of life will be gone, and all effort to preserve human life on earth will be dropped. There will be no sound of the bridegroom and bride, no music, and no wedding songs.

There will also be no joy from the harvest, because the land will be empty, unused, and ruined. The cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem will both look sad in this way. When people look around and see no reason to rejoice, it is no wonder if they turn inward and find no heart for joy. God can quickly ruin the happiness of the most cheerful people and make it stop. That is one reason we should always rejoice with reverence, being both glad and wise.