Jeremiah 7:33, commentary and pictures

Jeremiah 7:33 belongs to the prophet's denunciations of sin and judgment against his people for wilfulness, idolatry, treachery, shamelessness and the abominations of Topheth. They had built high places in Tophet in the valley of the son of Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in the fire, and they had ignored prophetic warnings, so mere temple worship was of no avail to the ungodly. The punishment declared would soon come upon them through the swift avenger Babylon. It was utter destruction brought on Jerusalem for its wickedness in the judgment that accompanied Judah's downfall as an independent nation.

Tophet in the valley of Hinnom, the valley of the son of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, would no more be called Tophet but the Valley of Slaughter. They would bury in Tophet till there was no place and no room remained. Then the carcasses of this people would lie unburied and exposed in disgrace as meat for the fowls of heaven and the beasts of the earth, with none to drive or frighten the scavengers away. That valley was where refuse and the bodies of animals and condemned malefactors were cast out and consumed by worms and fire. It therefore shows that Gehenna is an image of death and the destruction of what is corrupt, a place of punishment by burning and slaughter where the wicked perish and are consumed and eaten, with worms and fire as agents that consume bodies, not a place where the dead are preserved in eternal torment or tormented as living souls.

As Gehenna, the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem where the dead bodies of animals and malefactors were cast became a type of the complete destruction of wickedness at the close of the millennium. The same disgraceful fate of corpses fed upon by birds and beasts with no one to drive the animals away is applied to Jesus' body, left outside Jerusalem at the gate leading into the valley of Hinnom to be devoured by birds.