Jeremiah — Chapter 7
Synopsis: The famous Temple Speech. Jeremiah stands in the Temple gate and denounces the false confidence in the Temple's sanctity: 'Is this house become a den of robbers?' God rejects the Temple as He rejected Shiloh. Tophet/Gehenna will be the place of slaughter.
Verse 4
Trust not in lying words, saying: The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, it is the temple of the Lord. Three times 'the temple of the Lord' — the incantatory formula by which false assurance was given. Lapide: the vain repetition of sacred formulae without moral conversion is exactly what the Temple speech attacks. Applied to those who think their baptism, sacramental reception, or church attendance guarantees them against God's judgment.
Verse 11
Is this house then, in which my name hath been called upon, become a den of robbers in your eyes? I too have seen it, saith the Lord. Christ quotes this in Matt.21:13 and parallels when cleansing the Temple. The 'den of robbers' (spelunca latronum) = the place where robbers return to feel safe after their crimes, bringing their guilt-polluted bodies into the sanctuary as if it would protect them.
Verse 31
And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Ennom, to burn their sons, and their daughters in the fire: which I commanded not, nor thought of. Tophet in the Valley of Hinnom (Gehinnom = Gehenna): the site of child sacrifice to Moloch, which God calls an abomination He never commanded. Lapide: this passage is one of Scripture's strongest condemnations of pagan cruelty; it also grounds Christ's use of 'Gehenna' as a type of eternal hell.