Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
Jeremiah, at God's command, shatters an earthen potter's flask in the valley of Topheth, to signify that the Jews will likewise be shattered by the Chaldeans, and will be buried in droves in Topheth (which they polluted with the blood of innocents, sacrificing them to the idol Moloch); because for the multitude of the slain, any other place will be too small for burial. This history and prophecy occurred either under Joakim, as a Castro holds, or under Zedekiah, as Abulensis holds; for neither can be determined with certainty.
Vulgate Text: Jeremiah 19:1-15
1. Thus says the Lord: Go, and take an earthen flask of the potter from the elders of the people and from the elders of the priests: 2. and go out to the valley of the son of Hinnom, which is near the entrance of the Potsherd Gate: and there you shall proclaim the words that I shall speak to you. 3. And you shall say: Hear the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem: thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will bring affliction upon this place, so that the ears of everyone who hears it shall tingle: 4. because they have forsaken Me, and have made this place foreign: and they have poured out libations in it to foreign gods, whom neither they, nor their fathers, nor the kings of Judah knew: and they have filled this place with the blood of innocents. 5. And they built the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire as a holocaust to Baal: which I did not command, nor did I speak of, nor did it enter My heart. 6. Therefore behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, and this place shall no longer be called Topheth, or the Valley of the son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. 7. And I will scatter the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place: and I will overthrow them by the sword before their enemies, and by the hand of those who seek their lives: and I will give their corpses as food to the birds of the sky, and to the beasts of the earth. 8. And I will make this city an object of horror and of hissing: everyone who passes through it shall be astonished, and shall hiss at all its plagues. 9. And I will feed them with the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters: and each one shall eat the flesh of his friend in the siege and in the distress, in which their enemies and those who seek their lives shall hem them in. 10. And you shall shatter the flask before the eyes of the men who go with you. 11. And you shall say to them: Thus says the Lord of hosts: So will I shatter this people and this city, as a potter's vessel is shattered, which cannot be restored again: and they shall be buried in Topheth, because there is no other place for burial. 12. So will I do to this place, says the Lord, and to its inhabitants: and I will make this city like Topheth. 13. And the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah, shall be like the place of Topheth, unclean — all those houses upon whose rooftops they sacrificed to all the host of heaven, and poured out libations to foreign gods. 14. Then Jeremiah came from Topheth, where the Lord had sent him to prophesy, and he stood in the court of the house of the Lord, and said to all the people: 15. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will bring upon this city, and upon all its cities, all the evils that I have spoken against it: because they have hardened their neck, so as not to hear My words.
Verse 1
1. TAKE A FLASK FROM THE ELDERS OF THE PEOPLE — as our translator plainly renders it. Others supply: lead some with you. So the Chaldean, St. Jerome, Pagninus, Vatablus, Theodoret, Rabanus; whence they distinguish the text thus: Go and take, or, as Vatablus says, buy, namely from a potter, an earthen flask of the potter: "and (for the Hebrew has 'and') from the elders of the people" some, supply take, or summon, whom you may lead with you, as though about to perform something new and marvelous prophetically, so that they may be witnesses and spectators as well as hearers of your deed: for that these witnesses were present is clear from verse 10.
Verse 2
2. AND GO OUT TO THE VALLEY OF THE SON OF HINNOM. — For 'valley' the Septuagint translates πολυάνδριον, as if to say: a mass grave of men. So in the Basilica of St. Peter here in Rome, in a certain crypt near the crypt of St. Peter, there is, and one reads inscribed, 'Polyandrion,' because many bodies of the faithful are buried there, who although they have not been canonized, nevertheless died piously in the hope of blessed resurrection. Such polyandria are the ossuaries in cemeteries, which are heaps of skulls and bones of Christians. Jeremiah led them there, so that considering in this valley their own sepulcher, according to the prophecy of chapter 7:32; and that their earthen body would shortly be shattered, and carried out like dung to Topheth, and their soul to Gehenna through the Chaldeans (that is, through demons), they might repent, and worship and fear the true God. For he saw that the Jews, hard and obstinate, were not moved by words; and so he gave them a real sermon, namely a living representation, indeed an inspection of their own death and burial. Let the preacher do the same, so that by vivid description he may place before men and represent to them death, judgment, hell, and eternity: because although these things are terrible in themselves, they commonly do not move men unless they are represented and impressed upon them vividly.
WHICH (valley) IS NEAR THE ENTRANCE OF THE POTSHERD GATE. — Because near this gate potters lived, as Hugo and Lyranus say, or because through it fragments of pottery vessels and refuse were carried out. So R. Solomon. Whence the Chaldean translates it as the dung gate, which was on the south side, as is clear from 2 Esdras 12:31, and Bochart asserts this. Therefore Vatablus and Isidore are not correct in translating the Hebrew חרסית charsit, that is 'potsherd,' as 'sun' (for that word is cheres), as if to say: to the sun gate, that is the Eastern gate. For this gate was on the south, not the east. Ill-omened gates, says Plutarch in his book On Curiosity, are those through which they lead out the condemned to execution, and refuse. Such was this one, through which they led out children to be slaughtered in Topheth. Thus symbolically, the senses are gates; because they are the gates of desire and sin.
Verse 3
3. HIS EARS SHALL TINGLE — with pain and fear, as if to say: They shall be so struck with dread, as if their ears were struck by the most violent thunder.
Verse 4
4. BECAUSE, etc., THEY HAVE MADE THIS PLACE FOREIGN (that is, profaned it) — by consecrating it to idols, as he said about Topheth, as if to say: Because they brought a foreign religion into this place, abandoning their ancestral and inherited one. For the word 'foreign' and 'alienation' in Scripture signifies a foreign religion and worship. Hence they are called foreign gods, that is, gods of another religion and of foreign ceremonies, not native to, nor familiar among the people. Hence also in 2 Chronicles 14:2, it says in the Hebrew, he removed the altars of alienation; which the Septuagint translates, he removed the altars of foreigners; our translator renders, he overthrew the altars of foreign worship. Hence finally the nations are called foreigners; because they worship foreign, that is, strange gods.
TO GODS, WHOM NEITHER THEY NOR THEIR FATHERS KNEW — namely as long as they were upright and pious. So St. Jerome; or, as Vatablus says, as if to say: Gods whose power and resources they never experienced, Deuteronomy 32:38, whom accordingly they themselves formerly, as well as their fathers, did not acknowledge, but spurned as foreign, vain, and false.
THEY HAVE FILLED, etc., WITH THE BLOOD OF INNOCENTS — namely of the Prophets, and of little children, whom they burned to Moloch. So St. Jerome, Rabanus, St. Thomas.
Verse 6
6. THIS PLACE SHALL NO LONGER BE CALLED TOPHETH, etc., BUT THE VALLEY OF SLAUGHTER — because there the Jews will be slain by the Chaldeans, as he said in chapter 7:32. Here Topheth alludes to the root יפה iapha, that is, beautiful, pleasant, as if to say: This valley shall not be called, as before, Topheth, that is, pleasant; or also toph, that is, of drums and dances; but "the Valley of Slaughter," both because many will be slain there; and "of slaugh-
ter," that is, of the slain, or of very many corpses, which will be brought there in countless numbers as if to the common burial place of the Jews. For the common sepulcher of the Jews was in the valley of Kidron, in that part which is called Gehenna or Topheth, as is clear from 4 Kings 23:6. And hence this valley was called the valley of corpses, of ashes, of skulls, and the region of death, as is clear from Jeremiah 31:40. For the Jews, naturally fearing the stench of corpses, and lest they be legally contaminated by contact with them, carried them out to sepulchers placed outside the city, as I said on Leviticus 19. For the same reason even now some cities have established cemeteries outside the city, as I myself observed in Nuremberg and in many other cities of Germany.
I WILL SCATTER THE COUNSEL OF JUDAH AND JERUSALEM IN THIS PLACE — the counsel they took to rebel against Nebuchadnezzar before their god Moloch, by burning many children to him, says St. Thomas. Second and better, Hugo, as if to say: "In this place," that is in Topheth, where the Jews sinned, I will make a great slaughter of them through Nebuchadnezzar, by which slaughter and terror I will scatter all the counsels of the Jews, so that they will not know where to turn, what counsel to take, to defend themselves against him: for they will think that they will receive help from their idol in that place, and in that very place they will be slain. For 'I will scatter,' the Hebrew is בקותי baccoti, that is 'I will empty out,' where there is an elegant paronomasia between בֹקק bacac, that is 'to empty,' and בקבק bacbuc, that is 'flask,' the symbol and sign of this emptying and scattering, verse 1, as if to say: I will scatter and empty them out, just as I scattered and emptied the flask, by shattering it.
Verse 8
8. UPON ALL. — In Hebrew, upon all its plagues, that is, seeing so many of its plagues and disasters.
Verse 9
9. I WILL FEED THEM WITH THE FLESH OF THEIR SONS. — That this happened in Jerusalem during the siege by the Chaldeans is clear from here, and Moses had threatened this to them in Deuteronomy 28:53. More fully, say St. Jerome and Rabanus, this happened to the Jews after Christ, when besieged by Titus and Vespasian, as is clear from Josephus and Hegesippus: for the Roman destruction was the type of this Chaldean one. EACH ONE SHALL EAT THE FLESH OF HIS FRIEND. — From this it is clear that this was the crime not of one but of many; for the Chaldean's translation is weak: Each one will plunder the substance of his neighbor in the siege. It is a hyperbole: Each one, that is, many.
Verse 11
11. SO WILL I SHATTER THIS PEOPLE, AS A POTTER'S VESSEL IS SHATTERED, WHICH CANNOT BE RESTORED AGAIN. — For although after seventy years of captivity the Jews restored their nation, yet this was as it were another and new age, another and new generation. Second and better, "so will I shatter," that is, I will fully execute the vengeance of destruction that I have threatened them with, so that they will be utterly shattered in the present, and cannot be restored by themselves; but by Me alone after seventy years, as in another age, they will be restored into another commonwealth. Therefore the Jews could not be restored by human power, but by divine power. So Christ says that what is impossible with men is possible with God, Matthew 19:26. So Maldonatus and a Castro. More fully and more truly this was fulfilled in the destruction of the Jews by Titus. So St. Jerome, who also adds: "Although the Jews think that a golden and bejeweled Jerusalem is to be restored to them; and again victims, and sacrifices, and the marriages of saints, and the kingdom of the Lord Savior on earth. Which things although we do not follow, yet we cannot condemn: because many ecclesiastical men and martyrs have said so: and let each one abound in his own sense, and let all things be reserved to the Lord's judgment." But this is now a well-known and condemned heresy of the Chiliasts or Millenarians, whose author was Papias, with followers Irenaeus, Tertullian, Victorinus, Lactantius. On which matter I have spoken in Apocalypse 20:6. For from that passage Papias and the Chiliasts took the occasion of their error. With a similar expression the Psalmist predicted that the enemies of God would be shattered like a potter's vessel, Psalm 2:9, and Isaiah, chapter 30:14.
Verse 12
12. I WILL MAKE THIS CITY LIKE TOPHETH — I will burn it through the Chaldeans, just as they themselves burned their children in Topheth to the idol Moloch. Second, I will profane it like Topheth, so that it becomes a slaughterhouse of its own citizens; whence follows:
Verse 13
13. ALL THE HOUSES SHALL BE UNCLEAN LIKE TOPHETH. — Because in their houses they worshipped idols, just as in Topheth, says St. Jerome, and because in the houses many were to be killed, and the houses defiled with corpses, just like Topheth.
ON WHOSE ROOFTOPS — that is, roofs. So the Septuagint, the Hebrew, the Chaldean; for roofs in Judea were flat, much more so than in Italy, only slightly sloped so that rain would run off: and so on the roofs they walked, dined, etc. Indeed even now in Syria houses do not have roofs, nor tiles, nor shingles; but only terraces, or pavements, which serve as roofs, on which they freely walk, eat, and sleep in summer: and they do this all the more conveniently because there it never rains for five or six whole months; but the sky is clear: on the sides there is a small wall, lest anyone easily slip and fall. All these things to me
confirmed to me at Rome the Reverend Father Joannes Antonius Marietus, who at the commission of the Supreme Pontiff traveled through Judea and Mesopotamia three years ago. They used therefore to ascend to the rooftops, so that from there they could see the stars and worship them, as is clear from Zephaniah 1:4: "I will destroy, etc., those who worship on the rooftops the host of heaven."
Verse 14
14. HE STOOD IN THE COURT. — The same things that Jeremiah had briefly said in Topheth, he now says in the court of the temple to all the others, who had been unwilling to come to Topheth. So St. Jerome, Rabanus, St. Thomas.
Verse 15
15. BECAUSE THEY HAVE HARDENED THEIR NECK, SO AS NOT TO HEAR MY WORDS. — He says "neck" when he should have said ear: for one hears with the ear, not the neck. But he wanted to touch the cause of the evil: for a hardened neck is the cause of a hardened and stopped-up ear, as if to say: Because they hardened their neck and their spirit, they thereby shook off the yoke of God's law, and therefore turned away and stopped their ears, so as not to hear the words and commands of the Prophets: or, if they did hear, not to obey them, but to despise them, indeed to ridicule them. For the Hebrews take the simple verb for the compound (which they lack); 'to hear' for 'to obey.' These Jews therefore had their hand in their ear, their ear in their neck, their neck in their heart, their heart in obstinacy.