Jeremiah 7:32-34
“‘But soon, very soon’—GOD’s Decree!—’the names Topheth and Ben-hinnom will no longer be used. They’ll call the place what it is: Murder Meadow. Corpses will be stacked up in Topheth because there’s no room left to bury them! Corpses abandoned in the open air, fed on by crows and coyotes, who have the run of the place. And I’ll empty both smiles and laughter from the villages of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem. No wedding songs, no holiday sounds. Dead silence.’”
“So beware, for the time is coming,’ says the LORD, ‘when that garbage dump will no longer be called Topheth or the valley of Ben-Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. They will bury the bodies in Topheth until there is no more room for them. The bodies of my people will be food for the vultures and wild animals, and no one will be left to scare them away. I will put an end to the happy singing and laughter in the streets of Jerusalem. The joyful voices of bridegrooms and brides will no longer be heard in the towns of Judah. The land will lie in complete desolation.”
Language, like any of God’s other good gifts, can be corrupted by Satan, chiefly when words are redefined for self-preservation and greed. This clouds our communication but not God’s vision. Thankfully he is true to his righteousness and calls us out as he did Israel here. God stands firm and we cannot escape our fates by trying to shift the fabric of the universe, calling black, white and white, black.
Few have ever heard, “Dead silence.” It is the unnatural quiet of a noisy, lively place. I heard it once, in the woods with a forest fire ten miles away. The absence of the natural world’s background music filled me with supernatural dread. In Judah, survivors would be left with horror and grief when human noises disappeared. They weren’t the only ones. God grieved too.
Lord Jesus, thank you for forgiving me, helping me, saving me from myself. You are my lifeline out of the pain within and around me. I cling to you. Never let me go.