1Thus said Yahweh: Go and buy a potter’s earthenware flask, and some of the elders of the people and some of the elders of the priests,
2and go out to the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, which is at the entrance of the Potsherd Gate, and there call out the words that I speak to you.
3And you shall say, ‘Hear the word of Yahweh, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus said Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I am bringing disaster upon this place, such that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle.
4Because they have forsaken me and have made this place foreign, and have burned incense in it to other gods whom neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah have known, and have filled this place with the blood of the innocent —
5and they have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or speak, nor did it come up upon my heart.
6Therefore, behold, days are coming, declares Yahweh, when this place will no longer be called Topheth or the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.
7And I will pour out the plan 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 life. And I will give their corpses as food for the birds of the heavens and for the beasts of the earth.
8And I will make this city a horror and an object of hissing; everyone who passes by it will be appalled and hiss because of all its wounds.
9And I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and each will eat the flesh of his neighbor, in the siege and in the distress with which their enemies and those who seek their life will press them.
10Then you shall break the flask before the eyes of the men who go with you,
11and you shall say to them, ‘Thus said Yahweh of hosts: So will I break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter’s vessel, so that it can never be mended again; and in Topheth they will bury, because there will be no other place to bury.
12So will I do to this place, declares Yahweh, and to its inhabitants, making this city like Topheth.
13And the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will be, like the place of Topheth, defiled — all the houses on whose rooftops they burned incense to all the host of the heavens and poured out drink offerings to other gods.
14Then Jeremiah came from Topheth, where Yahweh had sent him to prophesy, and he stood in the court of the house of Yahweh and said to all the people,
15‘Thus said Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I am bringing upon this city and upon all its towns all the disaster that I have spoken against it, because they have stiffened their neck so as not to hear my words.’
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