Jeremiah Chapter 19 — The Broken Jar

¹Thus said the LORD, “Go, and buy a potter’s earthen container, and take some of the elders of the people and of the elders of the priests;

²and 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.

³Say, ‘Hear the LORD’s word, kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: The LORD of Armies, the God of Israel says, “Behold, I will bring evil on this place, which whoever hears, his ears will tingle.

⁴Because they have forsaken me, and have defiled this place, and have burned incense in it to other gods that they didn’t know—they, their fathers, and the kings of Judah—and have filled this place with the blood of innocents,

⁵and have built the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire for burnt offerings to Baal, which I didn’t command, nor speak, which didn’t even enter into my mind.

⁶Therefore, behold, the days come,” says the LORD, “that this place will no more be called ‘Topheth’, nor ‘The Valley of the son of Hinnom’, but ‘The valley of Slaughter’.

⁷“ ‘ “I will make the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem void in this place. 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 to be food for the birds of the sky and for the animals of the earth.

⁸I will make this city an astonishment and a hissing. Everyone who passes by it will be astonished and hiss because of all its plagues.

⁹I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters. They will each eat the flesh of his friend in the siege and in the distress with which their enemies, and those who seek their life, will distress them.” ’

¹⁰“Then you shall break the container in the sight of the men who go with you,

¹¹and shall tell them, ‘The LORD of Armies says: “Even so I will break this people and this city as one breaks a potter’s vessel, that can’t be made whole again. They will bury in Topheth until there is no place to bury.

¹²This is what I will do to this place,” says the LORD, “and to its inhabitants, even making this city as Topheth.

¹³The houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah, which are defiled, will be as the place of Topheth, even all the houses on whose roofs they have burned incense to all the army of the sky and have poured out drink offerings to other gods.” ’ ”

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

¹⁵“The LORD of Armies, the God of Israel says, ‘Behold, I will bring on this city and on all its towns all the evil that I have pronounced against it, because they have made their neck stiff, that they may not hear my words.’ ”