Jeremiah 7

Some people in Judah seemed to believe God would never let anyone mess with his house, the Jerusalem Temple, or the city, the LORD’s hometown on earth. “The LORD chose Jerusalem. He wants this to be his home. ‘This is my home / My resting place forever. Here is where I will live / For here is where I want to be’” (Psalm 132:13-14). Also, he promised that David’s family would reign over Israel forever: “His dynasty will never end” (2 Samuel 7:13). But the people who later became known as Jews broke the ancient contract that their ancestors had made with God—and that each new generation renewed through the ritual of circumcision. The agreement was if they obeyed God he would protect them and give them what they needed to live. Well, they broke the contract, the neighborhood went south, and the LORD moved. So much for “We’ve got the LORD’s House.” Babylonians later stripped it and turned it into a rock pile. And they did it during the lifetime of Jeremiah and the people who ignored him.

This line reads like a creed, and versions of it show up throughout the Old and New Testaments—the entire Bible. These three groups were among the most vulnerable people in Bible times, as today. God wanted them protected. He had Moses tell the Hebrews that after they crossed into the Promised Land of Canaan they were to shout in unison some of the most important warnings and laws of God, including: “Doomed. Those are people who cheat immigrants, orphans, or widows” (Deuteronomy 27:17).

Shiloh today is called Khirbet Seilun. It was near the center of Ephraim’s tribe, about 20 miles (32 km) north of Jerusalem. Shiloh was where the Hebrews parked their tent worship center, after which the Temple was modeled (Joshua 18:1). Some Bibles call the worship center the Tabernacle. Israelites worship there like they would later at the Temple in Jerusalem. Philistine soldiers apparently destroyed it after they defeated King Saul, killing him and most of his sons.

Israel fell to Assyrian invaders more than a century earlier, in about 722 BC.

The Queen of Heaven was the title of Astarte, also known as Ishtar. She was a lead god in the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires, in what is now Iraq. People worshiped outside, under the sky. And the religion spread west to Israel, Lebanon, and Egypt. Some worshippers offered her bread cakes of some sort that were either shaped like her, or shaped in some image associated with her, such as a crescent moon or a star. Images of her that survive show her well endowed and prominently displayed from head to toe.

Cutting hair was a way of expressing grief (Job 1:20). As wind scattered the hair, invaders would deport and scatter survivors of the battles.

Topheth was a site in the Hinnom Valley just outside Jerusalem’s city walls, to the south. This is where some people of Judah reportedly sacrificed their own children to a god named Molech, much like others sacrificed sheep and bulls. Some kings of Jerusalem once sacrificed people there (2 Kings 23:10).

It was illegal among Jews to sacrifice humans (Leviticus 18:21).