Where and Why He Breaks the Bottle

Jeremiah 19:11-12

Imagine a prophetic performance art held in one of the worst places in the world - a site of mass murder, abuse of human values and respect for the sanctity of life? Perhaps one of the mines where minerals are hand-drawn from the earth, by enslaved children in order to satisfy our thirst for more digital screens? Perhaps the monument at Hiroshima or Auschwitz, a plantation in the south, or the gate to Gaza? 

Jeremiah goes there. With a clay bottle in hand - and he will break it. 

He goes to the gate that leads to the  Tophet. Basically - he stands at the gate of hell. 

The Tophet - which will become synonymous with hell in later Hebrew writings, was the location of ritual child sacrifice, in the valley right below what is today known as Mount Zion. The prophets of Jerusalem have made it their usual target of wrath, lamenting the popular custom, preserved for generations, to offer babies to the deities as sacrificial pleas for protection. This custom was still popular in Jerusalem when Jeremiah is a young man, later to be abolished by King Josiah and his religious reform. But it’s hard to obliterate a long held tradition, especially when so powerful and trauma-based as this one. 

Jeremiah stands at the gate that leads to this ritual site, clay bottle in hand, and as the curious people surround him, he breaks the bottle and proclaims: 

וְאָמַרְתָּ֨ אֲלֵיהֶ֜ם כֹּה־אָמַ֣ר ׀ יְהֹוָ֣ה צְבָא֗וֹת כָּ֣כָה אֶשְׁבֹּ֞ר אֶת־הָעָ֤ם הַזֶּה֙ וְאֶת־הָעִ֣יר הַזֹּ֔את כַּאֲשֶׁ֤ר יִשְׁבֹּר֙ אֶת־כְּלִ֣י הַיּוֹצֵ֔ר אֲשֶׁ֛ר לֹא־יוּכַ֥ל לְהֵרָפֵ֖ה ע֑וֹד וּבְתֹ֣פֶת יִקְבְּר֔וּ מֵאֵ֥ין מָק֖וֹם לִקְבּֽוֹר׃ כֵּֽן־אֶעֱשֶׂ֞ה לַמָּק֥וֹם הַזֶּ֛ה נְאֻם־יְהֹוָ֖ה וּלְיֽוֹשְׁבָ֑יו וְלָתֵ֛ת אֶת־הָעִ֥יר הַזֹּ֖את כְּתֹֽפֶת׃

“So speaks YHWH, GOD of Hosts: So will I smash this people and this city, as one smashes a potter’s vessel, which can never be mended. And they shall bury their dead in the Topheth until no room is left for burying.

That is what I will do to this place and its inhabitants—declares YHWH. I will make this city like Topheth:”

Jeremiah 19:11-12

The image of the broken bottle leaves its mark on the people. The prophecy is awful - this city will burn, you will lose your children as you are offering them now. None will escape this hell.

The aftermath for Jeremiah is also harsh.

But before we learn of their response to this dramatic gesture - what is it that Jeremiah is actually doing here? Is he a performance artist - or is there an actual religious or even magical dimension to this performance of breaking the bottle? 

Archaeologists in Egypt have dug up  fragments of broken clay bottles, likely used for magic spells, with inscriptions on them - people’s names. It is assumed that these bottles were broken in a ritual to demonstrate that the people whose names were on the bottle were no longer welcome in the king’s court or deemed enemies of the kingdom.  Is Jeremiah using a ritual practice, possibly familiar to his audience, to prove his terrible point in a medium they will recognize and maybe even internalize?  We may never know. 

@WayneRoosa, an intriguing artist and art historian, reflects on this and other prophetic gestures of performance in this fascinating essay he wrote about the intersections of ancient biblical prophetic traditions and modern performance art.  As a devout Christian he proposes that “ the interesting question is about the phenomenon of public performance art and symbolic prophetic gestures, both contemporary and ancient. There exists within the western psyche a deep and authentic cultural form—and therefore a culturally expressive mechanism—for confronting contradictions between our ideals and the real world. Particularly interesting is the role that performative images play in flushing out those contradictions.”

What is the contradiction that Jeremiah is trying to convey to his listeners - back there at the gates of hell in Jerusalem - and us today? 

Perhaps it’s the gap between how we perceive what’s real and sacred - and how we yet abuse it in the name of social-religious norms that privilege some over others, negating life in favor of death? 

Roosa compares the Hebrew prophets to some of today’s artists such as the Palestinian-British Mona Hatoum, suggesting that the resonance has to do with the ways we get to confront power, with “ how texts mediate and give elegy to the tragedies of violence, bloodshed, and loss. And it had to do with the prophetic figures of preacher and artist under conditions of suffering, oppression, and threat.”

Whatever Jeremiah’s intentions were - the gesture made a mark. He rises from the gate to hell, back into the city, and stands in the courtyard of the temple, broken bottle in hand. This is when his prophetic protest art captures the attention of the priests in charge. The person speaking truth to power will now be publicly punished - that’s coming next -- but the image he left us with will outlive the prophet and the priest, the punishment and its purpose. Like great art, perhaps like magic, it will still be active as we perceive it now, a broken bottle that will forever propel those of us who look at it to try harder at preventing  the fracture, to putting the pieces back together - or just to witness the broken, with honest, hurting, beating hearts, always broken and yet always whole.

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Breaking the Bottle: Jeremiah’s Prophetic Performance Art 

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Was Jeremiah a performing artist protesting social ills? Was he a poet speaking truth to power or a madman everybody tried to avoid? 

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