The original text of this chapter, as with the rest of the Book of Jeremiah, was written in Hebrew language. Since the division of the Bible into chapters and verses in the late medieval period, this chapter is divided into 34 verses.
The parashah sections listed here are based on the Aleppo Codex.[8] Jeremiah 7 is a part of the Fourth prophecy (Jeremiah 7-10) in the section of Prophecies of Destruction (Jeremiah 1-25). {P}: open parashah; {S}: closed parashah.
Chapters 7 to 10 are brought together "because of their common concern with religious observance".[9] Streane, in the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, dates Jeremiah's address to the beginning of the reign of King Jehoiakim (608–7 BC), because Jeremiah 26:1's very similar wording, "Stand in the court of the Lord’s house, and speak to all the cities of Judah, which come to worship in the Lord’s house" expressly dates this address to "the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah". However, Streane also notes that theologians Julius Wellhausen and Marti both place it as early as "the crisis brought about by the death of Josiah at Megiddo", before Jehoiakim's accession.[1]
Verse 9
Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods whom ye know not;[10]
Jeremiah listed six of the Ten Commandments[a] (cf. Exodus 20:1–17; Hosea 4:2) that he accused the people of breaking repeatedly without feeling ashamed.[11] Huey notes the use of "six infinite absolutes" in this verse to draw "attention to the indictment", as this word form on a finite verb is usually meant to stress the "certainty the verbal action."[11]
And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into My heart.[13]
"Tophet": originally not a local name, but a descriptive epithet, as appears in Job 17:6 ("by-word") as 'a thing spat upon and loathed', so is probably analogous to the scorn where bosheth, the "shameful thing," substituted "Baal" (cf. Jeremiah 3:24; Jeremiah 11:13), as the repeated prediction in Jeremiah 19:5 and Jeremiah 32:35 has the "high places of Baal".[14] The word "Tophteh" in Isaiah 30:33, though not identical in form, had probably has the same meaning as Tophet.[14]Child sacrifice at other Tophets contemporary with the Bible accounts (700–600 BC) of the reigns of Ahaz and Manasseh have been established, such as the bones of children sacrificed at the Tophet to the goddessTanit in Phoenician Carthage,[15] and also child sacrifice in ancient Syria-Palestine.[16] Scholars such as Mosca (1975) have concluded that the sacrifice recorded in the Hebrew Bible, such as Jeremiah's comment that the worshippers of Baal had "filled this place with the blood of innocents", is literal.[17][18]
^Geoffrey W. Bromiley International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: Q-Z -1995 p259 "Stager and Wolff have convincingly demonstrated that child sacrifice was practiced in Phoenecian Carthage (Biblical Archaeology Review, 10 [1984], 30–51). At the sanctuary called Tophet, children were sacrificed to the goddess Tank and her .."
^Hays 2011 "..(Lev 18:21-27; Deut 12:31; 2 Kgs 16:3; 21:2), and there is indeed evidence for child sacrifice in ancient Syria-Palestine." [Footnote:] "Day, Molech, 18, esp. n. 11. See also A. R. W. Green, The Role of Human Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East (SBLDS 1; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1975)."
^P. Mosca, 'Child Sacrifice in Canaanite and Israelite Religion: A Study on Mulk and "pa' (PhD dissertation. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1975)
^Susan Niditch War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence 1995 p 48 "An ancient Near Eastern parallel for the cult of Molech is provided by Punic epigraphic and archaeological evidence (Heider:203)
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