Top of Page
Page Style
word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 “Stand at the gate of the House of the Lord and there proclaim this word: ‘Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah who enter through these gates to worship the Lord. 3 This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: “Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will allow you to live in this place. 4 Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord’.
5 “Instead, if you really do amend your ways and your actions; if you act justly toward one another, 6 If you do not oppress the foreign resident, the fatherless, and the widow, and no longer shed innocent blood in this place, and if you no longer walk after other gods to your harm, 7 then I will allow you to live in this place, in the land that I gave your forefathers forever and ever.
8 “But look, you keep trusting in deceptive words that cannot help. 9 Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and walk after other gods that you have not known, 10 and then come and stand before Me in this House that is called by My Name, and say, ‘We are safe’? Then you continue doing all these detestable things! 11 Has this House, which is called by My Name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? I too have looked on and seen it”, declares the Lord.
12 “Go now to My place that was at Shiloh, where I had established My Name at first. See what I did to it because of the wickedness of My people Israel. 13 Yet while you were doing all these things”, declares the Lord, “I spoke of it to you time after time, but you would not listen; though I called to you, you would not answer. 14 Therefore, what I did to Shiloh, I will do to the House that is called by My Name—the temple in which you trust, the place I gave to you and your forefathers. 15 And I will cast you from out of My sight, just as I cast out all of your brothers, all the descendants of Ephraim.
16 “As for you, do not pray for this people, nor raise a cry or a prayer on their behalf; and do not plead with Me, for I will not listen. 17 Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? 18 The children gather wood, the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the Queen of Heaven, and they pour out drink offerings to other gods to provoke Me to anger. 19 But are they really provoking Me?” declares the Lord. “Is it not they who are harming themselves, to their own disgrace?”
20 Therefore, this is what the Lord God says, “Behold, My anger and My burning wrath will be poured out on this place, on man and on beast, on the trees of the field and on the fruit of the soil. My wrath will burn and not be quenched.”
21 This is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: “Go ahead, add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the meat yourselves! 22 On the day that I brought your forefathers out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak with them or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. 23 But this is what I commanded them: ‘Obey Me, and I will be your God, and you will be My people. Walk in all the ways that I command you so that it may go well with you’. 24 Yet they did not listen or incline their ear; instead they walked according to their own counsels, and according to their own stubborn, evil hearts. They went backward and not forward. 25 Since the day your forefathers came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have sent to you all My servants the prophets, time after time. 26 But they did not listen to Me or incline their ear. Instead they stiffened their neck, and they did even more evil than their forefathers had.
27 “When you speak all these words to them, they will not listen to you; and when you call to them, they will not answer you.
28 “Therefore you must say to them, ‘This is a nation that has not obeyed the voice of the Lord their God or received correction. Truth has perished, it has been removed from their lips. 29 Cut off your hair and throw it away, and take up a lament on the barren heights. For the Lord has rejected and abandoned the generation that has provoked His wrath’.
30 “For the people of Judah have done evil in My sight,” declares the Lord. “They have set up their detestable idols in the House that is called by My name and defiled it. 31 They have built the shrines of Topheth in the Valley of Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in the fire, something I did not command, nor did it enter My mind.
32 “Therefore, know for certain that the days will come,” declares the Lord, “when it will no more be called Tophet, or the Valley of Ben-hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter, for they will bury the dead in Tophet until there is no more room. 33 The dead bodies of this people will become food for the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth, and there will be no one to frighten them away. 34 At that time I will bring an end to the sounds of joy and gladness and the voices of bridegroom and bride from the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, for the land will become a desolate waste.
The Hebrew term bayith (pronounced bah'-yith) is a generic term that is used extensively throughout the Old Testament. Its frequent and common use across written and spoken Hebrew incorporated numerous nuances referring to a wide range of different man-made structures, and was also used figuratively to describe personal circumstances, as listed below:
The Hebrew phrase bayith could be used to refer to:
(1) A dwelling place or man-made object:—(a) Man-made structures, such as buildings, temples, monuments, prisons, and tombs etc.; also including residential buildings such as houses and palaces.(b) A shelter or dwelling place of animals.(c) Human bodies (figuratively).(d) Sheolℝ (that is, the place where the dead go).(e) An abode of light and darkness.(f) The inward surfaces of a man-made object or structure.(g) Of the land of Ephraim.(2) A place.
(3) A receptacle.
(4) A home or house, as containing a family.
(5) A household, family, extended family, or clan; for example, ‘the house of David’.
(6) The household affairs.
(7) The inward person (metaphorically).
In addition, the common Hebrew term bayith was also used in a number of locations across ancient Israel as part of the place name of various cities, towns, and villages. The first part of the name of the settlement was Beth (that is, bayith ); for example, Bethel, meaning, ‘the house of God’; Bethlehem, meaning, ‘the house of bread’; or Bethsaida, meaning, ‘the house of the hunt’, perhaps in reference to this particular settlement being a fishing village that was located on the shore of the Sea of Galilee in ancient times.
Hebrew is a branch of the Semitic group of languages spoken by the populations across ancient Canaan in the eastern Mediterranean region.
The foundational patriarch Abraham apparently adopted the Canaanite language after migrating there with his household some time around 2200-2000 BC, which then developed into the Hebrew language commonly spoken by his descendants, the Israelites, for perhaps 1,500 years. The simplicity of the ancient Hebrew language meant that it was seriously hampered by a lack of situationally specific words, as evidenced by the many possible interpretations of the word bayith. To compound this problem, the written form of ancient Hebrew contained only consonants and no vowels, rendering the written information it contained impossible to interpret, comprehend, or reproduce by a foreigner without the services of a literate, multi-lingual translator of the Hebrew on hand.
As a result, effective communication with non Semitic-speaking peoples from across the ancient world was stifled and remote written communications impossible, if they were to trade with, or have any other dealings with the Israelites, without first obtaining the services of skilled, highly literate, multi-lingual interpreters.
To compound this situation, Hebrew, like all languages, was subject to a drift in localised language diction, semantics, and comprehension, that over time would have also worked to accelerate the decline in its popular use across the eastern Mediterranean region, until by the time of Christ the Greek and Aramaic languages had completely replaced ancient Hebrew in everyday life for the common people.
The decline in the popular use of Hebrew, along with its eventual replacement by other languages, was also at the least in part attributable to the military invasions and conquests of the Jewish populations by hostile invaders, who themselves spoke in non-Semitic foreign languages. The subsequent defeat, enslavement, and exilic relocation of the remnant Jewish survivors to foreign lands then forced them to learn, speak, and function in the local languages of the lands they were resettled in, such as Babylon.
Consequently, by the third century BC ancient Hebrew had effectively become a dead language across the ancient world.
Evidently the Jewish scholars who translated the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek at that time also struggled with the meaning of some of the words. While their Greek Septuagint (LXX) translation remains an excellent, high quality manuscript, the diction and semantic interpretation of a number of the Hebrew words caused the translators some difficulties, such as with some of the superscriptions of the Book of Psalms, and in a few places elsewhere.
In fact it is likely that during the centuries of the late BC and early AD periods that apart from the extant remaining scrolls of the Hebrew Old Testament books and other Jewish writings, and the Rabbis and scholars of Judaism who studied and used them, the Hebrew language of their forebears was unknown to the common Jewish people across Palestine and the Near East.
In keeping with the times, the participants and authors behind the books of the New Testament also heavily relied on the third century BC Alexandrian Greek Septuagint Scriptures, for Old Testament quotes and the references to God that are used throughout the New Testament point to this, and various evidences indicate that Jesus Christ Himself spoke in Aramaic during the course of His Messianic mission to our planet.
The preservation of the ancient Hebrew language by scholars of the Jewish Scriptures was heightened by the vast effort of the Masoretic Jewish scholars, who over the course of around four hundred years, between 600 and 1000 AD, painstakingly compiled and assembled the Hebrew Old Testament into an excellent, highly coherent, remarkably accurate version known as the Masoretic Text. Throughout the written consonantal Hebrew of their version, the Masorites have also painstakingly inserted accurate additional diacritical glyphs for the vowels, providing both Jewish and non-Jewish readers for the first time with the means to correctly comprehend, understand, and speak the language of the ancient Hebrew Old Testament.
The Masoretic Text version has then gone on to be widely used over recent centuries as the basis for virtually all contemporary translations of the Hebrew Old Testament into almost every language that is commonly spoken on Earth. This is a staggering outcome, especially considering that the Holy Bible is by far and away the most popular, largest selling book that has ever existed in this world.
The religious writings and documents of the ancient Jewish people have worked to preserve the Hebrew language in both the written and spoken forms, primarily because of the vast significance and extreme importance of these sacred writings to all mankind. Such is the importance also to the Most High God of these sacred and most excellent writings He has give us, He has deliberately and fastidiously protected them and forced their survival for thousands of years, along with the near-perfect preservation of their contents also. This remarkable preservation and survival of the books of the Old Testament, and indeed of the complete Holy Bible, represents a powerful example of the diligent, timeless, and unshakable goodwill of the Lord our God towards all of us, forever. Amen