Jeremiah 19

This is what the LORD says: “Go and buy a potter’s earthenware jar. Take with you some of the elders of the people and some of the elder priests. Go out to the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, at the entrance of the Potsherd Gate, and proclaim there the words I tell you. Say: ‘Hear the word of the LORD, kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. This is what the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, says: Look, I am bringing disaster on this place that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. For they have forsaken me and made this place foreign; they have burned incense in it to other gods that neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah have known. They have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. They 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 of, nor did it enter my mind. Therefore look, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when this place will no longer be called Topheth or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. I will bring the plans of Judah and Jerusalem to nothing in this place. I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies and by the hand of those who seek their lives. I will give their corpses as food to the birds of the heavens and the animals of the earth. I will make this city a desolation and an object of hissing. Everyone who passes by it will be appalled and hiss at all its wounds. I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters; each will eat the flesh of his neighbor in the siege and distress with which their enemies and those who seek their lives will oppress them.’ Then break the jar in the sight of the men who go with you. Tell them: ‘This is what the LORD of hosts says: In the same way I will break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter’s vessel that can never be repaired. They will bury in Topheth because there is no other place to bury. This is what I will do to this place and its inhabitants, declares the LORD; I will make this city like Topheth. The houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will be unclean like the place of Topheth—all the houses on whose roofs they burned incense to all the host of heaven and poured out drink offerings to other gods.’” Then Jeremiah 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: “This is what the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, says: Look, I am bringing upon this city and all its towns all the disaster I have pronounced against it, because they have stiffened their necks, refusing to listen to my words.”

Rights and attribution