These pictures show the location of the Valley of Hinnom with the sites of the True Ha Makom (in the City of David) and the Foreign ha makom (in Hinnom Valley) spoken of in Jeremiah 19, plus two pictures of Hinnom today.
In Jeremiah chapter 19, where was Jeremiah sent to deliver his message about the broken pot?
He was sent by the Lord (and instructed to take some of the elders of the people and elders of the priests with him) down into the Valley of Hinnom, at the southern end of the City of David, where all kinds of horrific worship of false gods was undertaken, including the sacrifice of
children.
There, people had set up an alternate ‘hamakom’. The true Ha MAKOM (The Place, as the Temple was known) was not far away, in the City of David, near the Gihon Spring, but the disobedient and rebellious had set up alternative arrangements in Hinnom.
The key to understanding this is verse 4 in which Jeremiah tells them they have made an alien or foreign hamakom in the Valley of Hinnom. The Hebrew can be read thus…
‘…because they forsook me and are making an alien hamakom and are burning incense to other gods…’
The New King James translation says, ‘they have forsaken Me and made this an alien place, (hamakom) because they have burned incense in it to other gods’.
Jeremiah goes on to speak of them offering their children to Baal. He then speaks judgement upon their alternative hamakom or place of worship...
‘Therefore, the days come, saith the LORD, that this hamakom shall no more be called Tophet, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom, but The valley of Slaughter’.
This makes explicit the respect in which the prophet held the true HaMakom. Then in verse 13, using Scripture4all for example, the alternative ‘hamakom’ becomes even more clear. Here it
is…
‘And the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah, shall be defiled
like hamakom of Topheth (in the Valley of Hinnom), because of all the houses upon whose roofs they have burned incense unto all the host of heaven, and have poured out drink offerings unto other gods.’
This being so, it is apparent that Jeremiah is enraged (as is Yahweh) at the travesty of the people being drawn after other gods and providing for themselves a new centre, an alternate and foreign hamakom wherein they can conduct their awful appeasement of Baal and Molech.
Following his denouncement of the false hamakom in Topheth (part of the Valley of Hinnom), Jeremiah returns to the court of the true Temple (verse 14) and declares that judgement is coming on the entire city because the people he has spoken to in Hinnom have ‘stiffened their necks that they might not hear my words.”
The existence of this alternate, foreign and false 'ha makom' and Jeremiah's use of that term confirms the existence of the true and real Ha Makom (of which the prophet speaks repeatedly througout the book bearing his name).
For those engaged in the debate about the City of David site for the Jewish temples, my new e-Book 'THE TEMPLE QUEST' is a MUST-READ!
Using the Bible only and no extra-biblical texts, IAN HEARD convincingly demostrates that the long-revered site visited by Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the Patriarchs and known to them and the generations to come as Ha Makom, was where the temples stood.
Available for immediate download and eye-opening revelation at...
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