A Clay Jar
19 This is what the Lord says.
Go and buy a clay jar from a potter. Take along some of the elders of the people and some of the priests. 2 Go out to the Valley of Ben Hinnom, by the entrance of the Potsherd Gate. Proclaim there the words I will tell you.
3 Say this to them:
Hear the word of the Lord, you kings of Judah and you who live in Jerusalem. This is what the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says.
Watch out! I am going to bring a disaster on this place that will make the ears of all who hear about it ring, 4 because they have forsaken me and have defiled this place. They have burned incense in it to other gods that neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah ever knew. They have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. 5 They have built high places to Baal and burned their children in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I did not command or mention, and which did not enter my mind. 6 So listen to this. The days are coming, declares the Lord, when people will no longer call this place Topheth or Ben Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.
7 I will ruin[a] the plans of Judah and Jerusalem in this place. I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies, at the hands of those who seek their lives. I will make their dead bodies food for the birds in the sky and the wild animals in the land. 8 I will make this city desolate, and I will make it a target of contempt. Everyone who passes by will be horrified and scoff because of all its wounds. 9 I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters. They will eat one another’s flesh during the pressure from the siege that their enemies, those who want to kill them, will bring upon them.
10 Then break the jar in the sight of the men who are with you. 11 Tell them this is what the Lord of Armies says.
This is how I will break this people and this city, like a potter’s jar that is so smashed that it cannot be made whole again. They will bury people in Topheth until there is no place left to bury. 12 This is what I will do to this place, says the Lord, and to those who live here: I will make this city like Topheth. 13 The houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will become defiled—all the houses on whose rooftops they have burned incense to all the army of the heavens and poured out drink offerings to other gods. They will all be defiled like that place Topheth.
14 Then Jeremiah came back from Topheth, where the Lord had sent him to prophesy, and he stood in the courtyard of the House of the Lord and said to all the people: 15 “This is what the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says. I will certainly bring on this city and on all its towns every disaster that I have proclaimed against it, because they have become stiff-necked, refusing to hear my words.”
Footnotes
- Jeremiah 19:7 The Hebrew word baqaq, ruin, sounds like the word baqbuq, jar, in verse 1.