Jeremiah 19:1-15

YAHWEH said to me, “Go to the pottery shop and buy a clay jar. Then take along some of the city officials and leading priests and go to the Hinnom Valley, just outside the Potsherd Gate. Speak to the people the words I give you. Say to them, ‘Hear the word of YAHWEH, you kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem! YAHWEH, Commander of Angel Armies, the God of Israel, says to you: I am going to bring such a great disaster upon this place that the ears of all who hear about it will tingle with astonishment. For they, their ancestors, and the kings of Judah have defiled this place and forsaken me. They have sacrificed here to strange gods, whom they never knew, and have filled this place with the blood of innocent people. They have built altars to Baal and sacrificed their children to the fire as burnt offerings to Baal. This is not something I commanded them to do, nor did it ever enter my mind. Because they have done all this, behold, the time is coming when this place will no longer be called Topheth or the Hinnom Valley, but people will call it Slaughter Valley, declares YAHWEH. “ ‘And I will also frustrate the plans of Judah and Jerusalem in this place. I will cause their bloodthirsty enemies to triumph over them, and I will give their dead bodies as food to the beasts of the field and birds of the sky. I will make this once revered city an object of horror and astonishment; everyone who passes by it will be appalled and will make insulting remarks because of all its wounds! I will cause their bloodthirsty enemies to lay siege to their city and cause them great suffering. They will become so desperate that they will become cannibals, eating their neighbors and even their own children.’ “Then, smash the clay jar in the sight of the men who go with you and say to them: ‘YAHWEH, Commander of Angel Armies, says to you: See this smashed clay jar? That is what I will do to you. I will smash these people and this city as one smashes a potter’s vessel, never to be repaired. You will bury your dead here in Topheth, this unclean place; so many of you will die that there won’t be enough room to bury them. That is what I will do to this city and its inhabitants, declares YAHWEH. I will make this sanctuary city into a cemetery like Topheth. Both the houses of the kings of Judah and the houses of Jerusalem will be defiled like the place of Topheth—all the houses upon whose roofs offerings have been made to the whole host of heaven and drink offerings have been poured out to false gods.’ ” When Jeremiah returned from Topheth, where YAHWEH had sent him to prophesy, he stood in the court of YAHWEH’s temple and said to all the people: “YAHWEH, Commander of Angel Armies, the God of Israel, says to you: ‘I am going to bring upon this city and all its nearby villages every disaster that I have decreed against them because they have stubbornly hardened their hearts and refused to listen to my words.’ ”