Jeremiah 19

1Thus says the LORD: Go, buy a potter’s earthenware flask. Take some of the elders of the people and some of the elders of the priests,

2and go out to the Valley of Ben-hinnom, at the entrance of the Potsherd Gate. There proclaim the words that I will speak to you.

3Say: Hear the word of the LORD, kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus says the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel: Look, I am bringing such disaster on this place that the ears of everyone who hears of it will ring.

4Because they have forsaken me and made this place foreign, and have burned incense in it to other gods whom neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah have known, and because they have filled this place with innocent blood.

5They have built the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as whole offerings to Baal—something I did not command, did not speak of, and that never entered my heart.

6Therefore, look, days are coming, declares the LORD, when this place will no longer be called Topheth or the Valley of Ben-hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.

7I will empty out the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place. I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies and by the hand of those seeking their lives. I will give their corpses as food to the birds of the sky and the wild animals of the earth.

8I will make this city a horror and an object of hissing. Everyone who passes by it will be appalled and will hiss because of all its wounds.

9I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters; each one will eat the flesh of a neighbor in the siege and distress with which their enemies and those seeking their lives will press them.

10Then break the flask before the eyes of the people who go with you,

11and say to them: Thus says the LORD of Hosts: In this way I will break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter’s vessel that cannot be repaired again. They will bury in Topheth because there is no place left to bury.

12Thus I will do to this place, declares the LORD, and to its inhabitants, making this city like Topheth.

13The houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will become unclean like the place of Topheth—all the houses on whose roofs they burned incense to all the host of the heavens and poured out drink offerings to other gods.

14Then Jeremiah came from Topheth, where the LORD had sent him to prophesy. He stood in the court of the house of the LORD and said to all the people,

15Thus says the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel: Look, I am bringing on this city and on all its towns all the disaster that I have spoken against it, because they stiffened their neck so as not to listen to my words.