Chapter 19

Jeremiah is again sent to a specific place.  He takes an earthenware pot to the infamous Valley of Hinnom, and takes some elders with him.  His message is that because of the things that have taken place in this valley, especially because they have sacrificed children to idols, God is bringing down a disaster that will make those who hear of it cringe.  And this valley will no longer be the Valley of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.  This was also prophesied, in almost the same words, in Jer. 7:32.  That time, Jeremiah had been sent to the entrance of the temple.  To a specific place, as in this message.  God gives details:

8 And I will make this city a horror, a thing to be hissed at. Everyone who passes by it will be horrified and will hiss because of all its wounds. [Jer 19:8 ESV]

In those days, most people were familiar with what kinds of things went on when a city was thoroughly sacked.  They would understand the horror of what went on to reduce a city to the condition in which Babylon would leave Jerusalem.  Today, in this country, indeed in most countries, we don't truly appreciate that picture.  Isis gave us an inkling of it with their atrocities.  But all of Jerusalem received that treatment.

Then it gets still worse:

9 And I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and their daughters, and everyone shall eat the flesh of his neighbor in the siege and in the distress, with which their enemies and those who seek their life afflict them.' [Jer 19:9 ESV]

I am sure not one of his audience enjoyed this prophesy.  The message was so blunt, so direct, so inescapable that it compelled a response from the hearers.  They either repented on the spot, or they were enraged on the spot.  The first reaction would prevent the horror, the second would hasten it.  The same message is delivered today, but not so bluntly.  It is not physical destruction that we're are warned about today, it is eternity in hell.  But these two reactions are still there.  We can repent, or we can rage against God's right to send us to hell.  No amount of rage, no amount of logic, no amount of "A loving God would not..." can change the nature of God.  His nature requires that we follow Him as He is, or we go to eternal punishment.

After all this, Jeremiah was to shatter that earthenware vessel, demonstrating that God was about to shatter Jerusalem in a way that it could never be restored to what it was before.

2021 - I note again that Jeremiah's prophecy is almost exclusively near term.  Where Isaiah was near/far, or just far, Jeremiah is only near.  Jeremiah's predictions are confined almost exclusively to things that would happen in his own lifetime.