Jeremiah 19

The shattered jar

1This is what the LORD said: “Go and buy an earthenware jar from a potter. Take some of the elders of the people and some of the senior priests, 2and go out to the Valley of Ben-hinnom, at the entrance of the Potsherd Gate. There proclaim the words I tell you.

3Say: Hear the LORD’s word, kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. This is what the LORD of hosts, Israel’s God, says: Look, I am bringing disaster on this place that will make the ears of everyone who hears it ring.

4They have abandoned me and made this place foreign. Here they have burned offerings to other gods, gods neither they nor their ancestors nor Judah’s kings knew. They have filled this place with innocent blood.

5They have built Baal’s high places to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal—something I never commanded, never spoke of, and that never entered my mind.

6So 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 Judah’s and Jerusalem’s plans in this place. I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies, by the hands of those seeking their lives. I will give their corpses as food to the birds of the sky and the animals of the earth.

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

9I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters. They will eat one another’s flesh in the siege and distress their enemies, those seeking their lives, inflict on them.

10“Then break the jar in front of the men who went with you.

11Tell them: This is what the LORD of hosts says: In the same way, I will break this people and this city, as someone breaks a potter’s vessel that can never be repaired. People will bury the dead at Topheth for lack of room to bury them elsewhere.

12This is what I will do to this place and its inhabitants,” declares the LORD. “I will make this city like Topheth.

13Jerusalem’s houses and the houses of Judah’s kings will be unclean like Topheth—all those houses whose roofs were used to burn offerings to all the host of heaven and pour drink offerings to other gods.”

The warning in the temple court

14Jeremiah returned from Topheth, where the LORD had sent him to prophesy. He stood in the courtyard of the LORD’s house and said to all the people,

15“This is what the LORD of hosts, Israel’s God, says: Look, I am bringing on this city and all its towns every disaster I pronounced against it, because they stiffened their necks and would not listen to my words.”