The Broken Jar
1 This is what the Lord said, “Go and buy a potter’s earthen container and take some of the elders of the people and of the elders of the priests, 2 and go out to the valley of the son of Hinnom, which is by the entry of the gate Harsith and proclaim there the words that I will tell you.
3 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: I will bring disaster on this place so that whoever hears about it will be shocked. 4 Because they have forsaken me and have defiled this place and have burned incense in it to other gods that neither they, nor their fathers, nor the kings of Judah knew; and they have filled this place with the blood of innocents 5 and have built the high places of Baal, to burn their children in the fire for burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command, nor speak, which did not even enter into my mind.
6 Therefore, the day is coming, says the Lord, when this place will no longer be called Topheth, nor The Valley of the son of Hinnom, but it will be called The valley of Slaughter’. 7 In this place I will nullify the plans of Judah and Jerusalem. I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hand of those who seek their life. I will give their dead bodies as food for the birds of the sky and for the animals of the earth.
8 I will make this city a desolation and scorn. Everyone who passes by it will be appalled and scoff because of all of the destruction. 9 I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters. They will eat one another’s flesh in the siege and distress, which their enemies and those who seek their life will bring on them.’
10 Then you shall break the container in the sight of the men who go with you, 11 and you shall tell them that this is what the Lord of Hosts says: I will shatter this people and this city, as one breaks a potter’s vessel that cannot be made whole again. They will bury their dead in Topheth until there is no place to bury.
12 This is what I will do to this place and to its inhabitants, declares the Lord, making this city Topheth. 13 The houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah, which are defiled, will be like the place of Topheth, all the houses on whose roofs they have burned incense to the hosts of heaven and have poured out drink offerings to other gods.”
14 Then Jeremiah came from Topheth, where the Lord had sent him to prophesy, and he stood in the courts of the house of the Lord and said to all the people: 15 “This is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel says: ‘I will bring on this city and on all its towns all the disaster that I have pronounced against it because they have rebelled, so that they may not hear my words.’ ”