Jeremiah 19

1Thus says Yahweh: Go and buy a potter’s earthenware flask, and 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, which is at the entrance of the Potsherd Gate, and proclaim there the words that I will speak to you.

3And say, ‘Hear the word of the LORD, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I am bringing disaster on this place, at which everyone who hears of it—his ears will tingle.’

4Because they have forsaken me and made this place unrecognizable, and have burned incense in it to other gods whom neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah had known, and they have filled this place with the blood of innocents,

5They have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal—something I did not command or speak, nor did it arise in my heart.

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

7And I will frustrate the plan of Judah and Jerusalem in this place, and I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies and by the hand of those who seek their life, and I will give their corpses as food to the birds of the heavens and to the beasts of the earth.

8And I 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.

9And I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and each will eat the flesh of his neighbor in the siege and in the distress with which their enemies and those who seek their life will afflict them.

10Then you shall break the flask before the eyes of the men who are going with you.

11And you shall say to them, ‘Thus says Yahweh of hosts: In this way I will break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter’s vessel, which cannot be repaired again; and in Topheth they will bury because there is no place else to bury.’

12So I will do to this place, declares Yahweh, and to its inhabitants, making this city like Topheth.

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

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

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