Jeremiah breaks a jar before the elders in the valley of Hinnom, warning of judgment on the city. Artistic depiction of Jeremiah 19.
CFM-07 · Jeremiah 1–29 · Full lesson collection
Tophet and "the valley of slaughter" in Jeremiah 7, 19, and 32: the one thing that never came into the Lord’s heart, the tyrants who have always demanded children, and what He does with the little ones
When Jesus warned about hell, one word He used again and again was Gehenna. "Whosoever shall say… Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire" (Matthew 5:22). "Fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matthew 10:28).
Gehenna isn’t an abstract word. It’s a place name. It comes from the Hebrew Ge Hinnom, the valley of Hinnom, a real valley on the south side of Jerusalem. The book of Joshua puts it there: the border "went up by the valley of the son of Hinnom unto the south side of the Jebusite; the same is Jerusalem" (Joshua 15:8). You can walk into it today.
So why did Jesus use the name of a valley outside Jerusalem as His word for hell?
Jeremiah tells us. That valley is where Judah burned its children.
Tophet
"For the children of Judah have done evil in my sight, saith the LORD: they have set their abominations in the house which is called by my name, to pollute it. And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire." (Jeremiah 7:30–31)
Tophet was the altar site in that valley. Parents brought their sons and daughters there and burned them as offerings, to Baal (19:5) and to Molech (32:35).
The Lord had forbidden it before Israel ever entered the land. "Thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech" (Leviticus 18:21). "Even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods" — that’s what the nations did, and Israel was told not to (Deuteronomy 12:31).
Judah’s kings did it anyway:
Ahaz, the king Isaiah confronted: he "burnt his children in the fire" in the valley of the son of Hinnom (2 Chronicles 28:3).
Manasseh, his grandson: "he caused his children to pass through the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom" (2 Chronicles 33:6), and he "shed innocent blood very much, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another" (2 Kings 21:16).
Josiah, the good king, tore it down. He "defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech" (2 Kings 23:10).
Josiah is the king Jeremiah was called under (Jeremiah 1:2). Jeremiah watched a righteous king shut Tophet down. Then he watched the kings after Josiah open it back up.
The one thing that never came into His heart
Three times Jeremiah records the Lord’s answer to Tophet, and all three say the same thing:
"…to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart." (7:31)
"…to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind." (19:5)
"…to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind." (32:35)
The King James Version says "heart" once and "mind" twice. In Hebrew all three are the same word: lev, heart. It never came into His heart.
Now look six verses past the last one. In the same chapter, the Lord tells Jeremiah what He will do with His people:
"Yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant them in this land assuredly with my whole heart and with my whole soul." (32:41)
Burning children never entered His heart. Planting His children takes all of it. It’s the only place in Jeremiah where the Lord says "my whole heart," and He says it six verses after He names Tophet for the last time.
The hill above the valley
The temple stood on Mount Moriah: "Solomon began to build the house of the LORD at Jerusalem in mount Moriah" (2 Chronicles 3:1). Moriah is where God once told Abraham, "Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest… and offer him there for a burnt offering" (Genesis 22:2).
And on Moriah, God stopped the knife: "Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him" (22:12). He provided a ram "in the stead of his son" (22:13).
On the hill above, God stopped a father from offering his son. In the valley below, Judah’s fathers lit the fire anyway.
And the one time a Son was offered, it was God’s own: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son" (John 3:16). The Father never asked us to burn our children. He gave His.
From the valley to the temple, the same day
Notice the order of Jeremiah 7. Verse 30: they "set their abominations in the house which is called by my name." Verse 31: they built Tophet "to burn their sons and their daughters." The temple and the valley sit side by side in the text. Jeremiah 32:34–35 repeats the pair.
Ezekiel, Jeremiah’s younger contemporary, says it outright:
"For when they had slain their children to their idols, then they came the same day into my sanctuary to profane it; and, lo, thus have they done in the midst of mine house." (Ezekiel 23:39)
The same day. From the altar of Molech to the house of the Lord, with the smoke still on their clothes. And the law of Moses had already named what that does: whoever gives his seed to Molech does it "to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name" (Leviticus 20:3).
Go back to the temple sermon in Jeremiah 7, three paragraphs before Tophet: "And come and stand before me in this house… and say, We are delivered to do all these abominations? Is this house… become a den of robbers in your eyes?" (7:10–11). The Lord had warned them six verses earlier: "shed not innocent blood in this place" (7:6).
This is the den of robbers. The men who came up to worship had come up from the valley.
The valley of slaughter
The Lord renames the place twice:
"Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that it shall no more be called Tophet, nor the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter: for they shall bury in Tophet, till there be no place. And the carcases of this people shall be meat for the fowls of the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth." (7:32–33)
In chapter 19 He sends Jeremiah to act it out. Jeremiah buys a potter’s clay jar, takes the elders and the senior priests out "unto the valley of the son of Hinnom" (19:1–2), and tells them the charge: "they… have filled this place with the blood of innocents" (19:4). Then he breaks the jar:
"Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaketh a potter’s vessel, that cannot be made whole again: and they shall bury them in Tophet, till there be no place to bury." (19:11)
The valley where they killed their children becomes the valley where they’re buried. And the Lord goes further: "I will… even make this city as Tophet" (19:12). Jerusalem itself becomes the valley of slaughter.
Then Jeremiah walked straight from Tophet into the temple court and said it again to everyone there (19:14). That’s when Pashur, a priest and "chief governor in the house of the LORD," beat him and locked him in the stocks (20:1–2).
Isaiah saw Tophet too
Isaiah had already named the valley’s sin: "slaying the children in the valleys under the clifts of the rocks" (Isaiah 57:5).
And he saw what Tophet would finally become. In Isaiah 30, after "the Assyrian be beaten down" (30:31):
"For Tophet is ordained of old; yea, for the king it is prepared; he hath made it deep and large: the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the LORD, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it." (30:33)
The fire the tyrants built for children is the fire prepared for the tyrant. In context, the king Tophet is prepared for is the Assyrian, Isaiah’s great enemy of God’s people.
Isaiah’s very last verse looks out on the bodies of those who rebelled: "their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched" (66:24). When Jesus described Gehenna, He quoted that verse: "hell fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched" (Mark 9:47–48).
Jesus took the name of Jeremiah’s valley and the last line of Isaiah and made them one warning.
The tyrants who demand children
Rachel’s weeping in Jeremiah 31:15 isn’t one moment. It’s a voice that sounds every time a tyrant goes after the children, and scripture shows it from Abraham to the end of the world.
Pharaoh’s priest. The Book of Abraham records that Abraham’s own fathers "turned their hearts to the sacrifice of the heathen in offering up their children unto these dumb idols." "The priest of Elkenah was also the priest of Pharaoh." It was the custom of "the priest of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, to offer up upon the altar which was built in the land of Chaldea… men, women, and children." They tried to put Abraham on that altar too (Abraham 1:7–8, 12). Egypt’s priest at an altar in Chaldea. If you’ve read Isaiah with us, you know those two names.
Pharaoh. "Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river" (Exodus 1:22). Moses was hidden. And the Lord’s terms were stated before the first plague: "Israel is my son, even my firstborn… if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn" (Exodus 4:22–23). At midnight, "there was a great cry in Egypt" (12:30). The weeping reached Pharaoh’s own house.
The kings of Judah. Ahaz. Manasseh. Tophet.
Herod. He "slew all the children that were in Bethlehem" (Matthew 2:16). Joseph, warned by an angel, carried the Child to Egypt. And Matthew heard Jeremiah: "Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted" (Matthew 2:18).
Ammonihah. The Book of Mormon has its own valley of slaughter. In Ammonihah, a city whose "lawyers and… judges" Amulek named as "the foundation of the destruction of this people" (Alma 10:27), the believers’ "wives and children" were "cast into the fire," and "their records which contained the holy scriptures" were thrown in after them (Alma 14:8). Alma said, "the blood of the innocent shall stand as a witness against them" (14:11). Soon after, the city was gone: "in one day it was left desolate; and the carcasses were mangled by dogs and wild beasts" (Alma 16:10). Read that next to Jeremiah 7:33. They called it "Desolation of Nehors" (16:11).
The last Nephite wars. The Lamanites took "women and children" and "did offer them up as sacrifices unto their idol gods" (Mormon 4:14, 21). A civilization that sacrifices its children doesn’t survive it.
The dragon. "The dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born" (Revelation 12:4). John names him: "that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan" (12:9). Jesus named him too: "He was a murderer from the beginning" (John 8:44).
David’s psalm says who these offerings were really made to: "Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils, and shed innocent blood… and the land was polluted with blood" (Psalm 106:37–38).
"Spirit of the Age"
Michael Card wrote a song about exactly this: "Spirit of the Age," on The Final Word (1987). He hears Rachel’s weeping in Bethlehem and then hears it on every page of history: children offered up to whatever the age worships. He names the adversary behind Herod, who went after the cradle to stop the cross. He names the lie every age hears: give up your children, and it will go well for you. And he ends with the promise. The little ones who seemed to die for nothing will stand with the Ancient of Days (Daniel 7:22), and the Child from the manger will crush the serpent, as God promised in the garden (Genesis 3:15; Romans 16:20). Listen to it here.
Two times Matthew quotes Jeremiah
Matthew quotes Jeremiah by name twice, once at each end of Jesus’ life.
At His birth: Rachel weeping in Ramah, over the innocents Herod killed (Matthew 2:17–18).
At His death: Judas brings the thirty pieces of silver back to the chief priests and says, "I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood" (27:4). They won’t put it in the treasury, "because it is the price of blood" (27:6). So they buy "the potter’s field, to bury strangers in" (27:7), and "that field was called, The field of blood" (27:8). Matthew writes, "Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet" (27:9).
The wording Matthew quotes is closest to Zechariah 11:12–13, where the thirty pieces are thrown "to the potter in the house of the LORD." But Matthew names Jeremiah, and Jeremiah is the prophet of the potter (Jeremiah 18), of the potter’s jar broken in the valley of Hinnom (Jeremiah 19), and of a field bought with silver (Jeremiah 32).
Tradition places that field of blood, Aceldama (Acts 1:19), in the valley of Hinnom. That’s tradition, not scripture. But scripture gives us this much: the price of the innocent blood of the Son of God bought a potter’s field to bury strangers in. From Rachel’s weeping at His birth to the field of blood at His death, Matthew reached for Jeremiah both times.
The spirit of the age in our age
The valley of Hinnom isn’t only history. The spirit behind it still asks for children.
President Russell M. Nelson, writing as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve in 2008, called abortion "another war that claims more casualties annually than did World War I and World War II combined," and said, "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has consistently opposed the practice of abortion" ("Abortion: An Assault on the Defenseless," Liahona, October 2008).
We read Tophet as a mirror for our day. That’s an application, and we label it as one. But the pattern in scripture is plain: every age has its altar, and every altar asks for the children.
And in the same article, the surgeon who spent his career saving lives wrote the line that keeps this from being only a warning: "As far as has been revealed, a person may repent and be forgiven for the sin of abortion." The Lord who said Tophet never came into His heart is the same Lord who says "I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more" (Jeremiah 31:34).
What the Lord does with the children
Here’s where the valley ends, and it doesn’t end in the valley.
They are His. "Thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou hast borne unto me… That thou hast slain my children" (Ezekiel 16:20–21). My children. The Lord never stopped calling them His.
They are alive in Christ. "Little children are alive in Christ, even from the foundation of the world" (Moroni 8:12). "The infant perisheth not that dieth in his infancy" (Mosiah 3:18).
They are saved. The Prophet Joseph Smith saw it: "all children who die before they arrive at the years of accountability are saved in the celestial kingdom of heaven" (D&C 137:10).
He will contend for them. "I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy children" (Isaiah 49:25). "Can a woman forget her sucking child…? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands" (49:15–16).
They will come home. The verse Matthew didn’t quote is the next one in Jeremiah: "Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears… they shall come again from the land of the enemy. And there is hope in thine end, saith the LORD, that thy children shall come again to their own border" (Jeremiah 31:16–17).
The serpent wanted the children. The Father gave His Son. And the Son will crush the serpent (Genesis 3:15; Romans 16:20) and bring every one of the little ones home to His Father.
Search it out
Read Jeremiah 7:30–34 and 32:34–41 side by side. Find "never came into my heart" and "with my whole heart." Sit with the distance between them.
Read Matthew 2:16–18 and 27:3–10 together. Two Jeremiah quotations, two kinds of innocent blood, one at each end of His life.
Then read D&C 137:10 out loud. If anyone in your family has lost a little one, read it to them.
"And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart." — Jeremiah 29:13
Search. Not read.
Ken Krogue is a co-founder of The Covenant Project and has been deeply searching Isaiah for more than ten years. He writes with two AI research partners, Orson (Claude) and Nathan (ChatGPT), and approves every word.
For another way to approach your study: Seven Ways People Read Isaiah.
Continue searching CFM-07
- Jeremiah Stood in the Temple Gate and Called It a "Den of Robbers." The Priests and Prophets Tried to Kill Him.
- Jeremiah Promised David "a Righteous Branch." Zechariah Called the Branch "My Servant."
- The Church Was Never Meant to Carry You. Elder Bednar Said So, and Jeremiah Wrote It to the Captives in Babylon.
- Why We Split Jeremiah Into Two Lessons at Chapter 30
- The Rest of the Book: Jeremiah & Lamentations
