Old Testament · Jeremiah

Jeremiah 19

The Broken Jar

1Thus said the LORD: Go and buy a potter's earthen flask, and take some of the elders of the people and of the elders of the priests; 2and you shall go out to the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, which is at the entrance of the Gate of Potsherds^a, and you shall proclaim there the words that I speak to you. 3And you shall say: Hear the word of the LORD, kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem; thus said the LORD of hosts^b, the God of Israel: Behold, I am bringing evil upon this place, such that everyone who hears it, his ears shall tingle. 4Because they have forsaken me, and have made strange this place, and have burned incense in it to other gods whom they did not know, they and their fathers and the kings of Judah; and they have filled this place with the blood of innocents. 5And they have built the high places of the Baal, to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to the Baal, which I did not command^c and did not speak, and which did not come up upon my heart.

6Therefore, behold, days are coming, declares the LORD, when this place shall no longer be called Topheth, or the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. 7And I will make void the counsel 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 soul^d; and I will give their carcasses as food for the bird of the heavens and for the beast of the earth.

8And I will make this city a desolation and a hissing; everyone who passes by it shall be appalled and hiss because of all its plagues. 9And I will make them eat the flesh^e of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and each man^f shall eat the flesh of his friend, in the siege and in the distress with which their enemies and those who seek their soul shall distress them.

10And you shall break the flask before the eyes of the men who go with you, 11and you shall say to them: Thus said the LORD of hosts: So will I break this people and this city, as one breaks the vessel of a potter, which can no longer be repaired; and in Topheth they shall bury, for lack of room to bury.

12So will I do to this place, declares the LORD, and to its inhabitants, even making this city like Topheth; 13and the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah shall be, like the place of Topheth, defiled — all the houses on whose roofs they have burned incense to all the host of the heavens, and poured out drink offerings to other gods.

14And Jeremiah came from Topheth, where the LORD had sent him to prophesy, and he stood in the court of the house of the LORD and said to all the people: 15Thus said the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I am bringing upon this city and upon all its towns all the evil that I have spoken against it, because they stiffened their neck, so as not to hear my words.