Jeremiah 19

19 ¹ This is what our Father said: Go and buy a potter's clay flask, and take some of the elders of the people and some of the elders of the priests, ² and go out to the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, which is at the entrance of the Potsherd Gate, and proclaim there the words that I speak to you. ^a a v2 A potsherd is a shard of broken clay pottery; the gate was named for the potsherds discarded nearby.

³ Say: Hear the word of our Father, kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. This is what the Father of heaven's armies, the Father of Israel, says: Look, I am bringing such disaster on this place that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. ⁴ Because they have forsaken me and made this place foreign, burning incense in it to other gods whom neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah have known, and because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent ⁵ —and they have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal—something I never commanded or decreed, something that never entered my mind. ⁶ therefore, look, the days are coming, declares our Father, when this place will no longer be called Topheth or the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. ⁷ In this place I will pour out the plans of Judah and Jerusalem, and I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies, by the hand of those who want to kill them. I will give their corpses as food to the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth. ^b b v7 The word for "pour out" here sounds like the word for the clay flask Jeremiah carried — the emptied flask pictures the emptied plans of Judah. ⁸ I will make this city a horror, something to be hissed at; everyone who passes by it will be appalled and will hiss because of all its wounds. ⁹ I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and each one will eat the flesh of his neighbor during the siege and in the distress that their enemies and those who want to kill them press upon them.

¹⁰ Then you are to break the flask in front of the men who go with you,

¹¹ and say to them: This is what the Father of heaven's armies says: In the same way I will break this people and this city, just as one breaks a potter's vessel so that it can never be mended again. And they will bury in Topheth because there is no other place to bury. ¹² This is what I will do to this place, declares our Father, and to its inhabitants, making this city like Topheth. ¹³ The houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will be defiled 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.

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

¹⁵ This is what the Father of heaven's armies, our Father of Israel, says: Look, I am bringing on this city and on all its towns all the disaster I pronounced against it, because they stiffened their neck and refused to hear my words.