Jeremiah 19

1The LORD said this: “Go and buy a clay flask from a potter. Take with you some of the elders of the people and some of the senior priests, 2and go out to the Valley of Ben-hinnom, by the entrance of the Potsherd Gate. There proclaim the words I tell you. 3Say: ‘Hear the word of the LORD, you kings of Judah and people of Jerusalem. The LORD of Armies, the God of Israel, says this: Look, I am about to bring such disaster on this place that it will make the ears of all who hear of it tingle, 4because they have forsaken me and made this place belong to foreign gods. They have burned incense in it to other gods, gods that neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah had ever known, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. 5They have built Baal’s high places to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, a thing I never commanded or spoke of, and that never entered my mind.

6So look, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when people will no longer call this place Topheth or the Valley of Ben-hinnom; they will call it the Valley of Slaughter. 7In this place I will empty out the plans of Judah and Jerusalem. I will have them cut down by the sword in front of their enemies, by the hand of those who want to kill them, and I will give their dead bodies as food to the birds of the sky and the wild animals. 8I will make this city a horror and an object of scorn. Everyone who passes by will be appalled and will hiss in scorn at all its wounds. 9I will make them eat the flesh of their own sons and daughters, and they will eat each other’s flesh during the siege, in the distress that their enemies and those who want to kill them bring upon them.’ 10Then break the flask while the men who went with you watch, 11and say to them: ‘The LORD of Armies says this: In the same way I will break this people and this city, as a potter’s jar is broken that can never be mended. They will bury the dead in Topheth because there will be no other place left to bury them. 12This is what I will do to this place and to the people who live here, declares the LORD: I will make this city like Topheth. 13The houses of Jerusalem and the houses of Judah’s kings will be unclean like the place of Topheth: all the houses on whose roofs they burned incense to the whole host of heaven, and poured drink offerings out to other gods.’”

14Then Jeremiah came back from Topheth, where the LORD had sent him to prophesy. He took his stand in the court of the LORD’s house and spoke to all the people:

15“The LORD of Armies, the God of Israel, says this: Look, I am about to bring on this city and all its towns all the disaster I have announced against it, because they have stiffened their necks and refused to listen to my words.”