Jeremiah
19
- This is what the LORD says: "Go and
buy a clay jar from a potter. Take along some of the elders of the people
and of the priests
- and go out to the Valley of Ben Hinnom,
near the entrance of the Potsherd Gate. There proclaim the words I tell you,
- and say, 'Hear the word of the LORD, O kings
of Judah and people of Jerusalem. This is what the LORD Almighty, the God
of Israel, says: Listen! I am going to bring a disaster on this place that
will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle.
- For they have forsaken me and made this
a place of foreign gods; they have burned sacrifices in it to gods that neither
they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled
this place with the blood of the innocent.
- They have built the high places of Baal
to burn their sons in the fire as offerings to Baal -- something I did not
command or mention, nor did it enter my mind.
- So beware, the days are coming, declares
the LORD, when people will no longer call this place Topheth or the Valley
of Ben Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.
- "'In this place I will ruin the plans
of Judah and Jerusalem. I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies,
at the hands of those who seek their lives, and I will give their carcasses
as food to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth.
- I will devastate this city and make it an
object of scorn; all who pass by will be appalled and will scoff because of
all its wounds.
- I will make them eat the flesh of their
sons and daughters, and they will eat one another's flesh during the stress
of the siege imposed on them by the enemies who seek their lives.'
- "Then break the jar while those who
go with you are watching,
- and say to them, 'This is what the LORD
Almighty says: I will smash this nation and this city just as this potter's
jar is smashed and cannot be repaired. They will bury the dead in Topheth
until there is no more room.
- This is what I will do to this place and
to those who live here, declares the LORD. I will make this city like Topheth.
- The houses in Jerusalem and those of the
kings of Judah will be defiled like this place, Topheth -- all the houses
where they burned incense on the roofs to all the starry hosts and poured
out drink offerings to other gods.'"
- Jeremiah then returned from Topheth, where
the LORD had sent him to prophesy, and stood in the court of the LORD'S temple
and said to all the people,
- "This is what the LORD Almighty, the
God of Israel, says: 'Listen! I am going to bring on this city and the villages
around it every disaster I pronounced against them, because they were stiff-necked
and would not listen to my words.'"
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