Tophet

They have set up their abhorrent things in the house that bears my name in order to defile it.

They have built the high places of Topheth in Ben-Hanom Valley in order to burn their sons and daughters in the fire, a thing I did not command.

I never entertained the thought.

Therefore, look, the days are coming, the Lord's declaration, when this place will no longer be called Topheth and Ben-Hanom Valley, but Slaughter Valley.

Topheth will become a cemetery because there will be no other burial place.

The corpses of these people will become food for the birds of the sky and for the wild animals of the land, with no one to scare them away.

I will remove from the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem the sound of joy and gladness and the voices of the groom and the bride.

The sources outline how this functioned.

They had specific designated cultic locations for this practice called the Tophet.

The Tophet was an open air precinct, often located in a valley.

The most infamous one was located in the Valley of Hinnomim, just outside the walls of Jerusalem.

Right, right.

During times of extreme national crisis or to fulfill a dark vow, parents would bring their infants to the Tophet and offer them as burnt sacrifices to appease this twisted concept of a divine king.

For a very long time, through the 19th and early 20th centuries, many modern skeptical scholars simply refused to believe the biblical account.

They argued that the prophets were using hyperbole to condemn pagan influence.

That area which used to be set aside for idol worship and hanging out and partying, that now will be called Geha Rega, the Valley of Death.

And they'll bury there, in the Tovet, in Geben Hinnom, there'll be so much death, that they'll bury people in this area called Tophet, and there won't be any room left to bury anyone else.

The carcasses of the people will be left open in the fields.

They'll be eaten by the birds of the sky, and eaten up by the animals of the land.

Instead, they ate unleavened bread with their fellow priests.

He defiled Topheth, which is in Ben-Hanom Valley, so that no one could sacrifice his son or daughter in the fire to Molech.

He did away with the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun.

They had been at the entrance of the Lord's temple in the precincts by the chamber of Nathan-Melech the eunuch.

And here's the second thing.

Quote, they, the pagans, have built high places of Tophet to burn their sons and daughters in the fire.

Something, God says, I did not command neither, nor did it enter my mind.

That's from Jeremiah 731 NIV.

But desecrate means a Jew would not go near it or touch it.

In other words, he desecrated the valley and the high place of the valley, which is Tophet.

It remains kind of that idea, but in the intertestamental state, in other words, between the Old Testament and the New Testament, there's about 400 years.

And in that time, the idea evolves into a idea in Judaism that they equate it with the eternal hell.