1   These are the words of the Lord: Go and buy an earthenware jar. Then take with you ^note some of the elders of the people and of the priests, and go out to the Valley of Ben-hinnom, 2   on which the Gate of the Potsherds opens, and there proclaim what I tell you. 3   Say, Hear the word of the Lord, you princes of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. These are the words of the Lord of Hosts the God of Israel: I will bring on this place a disaster which shall ring in the ears of all who hear of it. 4   For they have forsaken me, and treated this place as if it were not mine, burning sacrifices to other gods whom neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah have known, and filling this place with

Confessions and addresses the blood of the innocent. 5   They have built shrines to Baal, where they burn their sons as whole-offerings to Baal. It was no command of mine; I never spoke of it; it never entered my thought. 6   Therefore, says the Lord, the time is coming when this place shall no longer be called Topheth or the Valley of Ben-hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. 7   In this place I will shatter the plans of Judah and Jerusalem as a jar is shattered; I will make the people fall by the sword before their enemies, at the hands of those who would kill them, and I will give their corpses to the birds and beasts to devour. 8   I will make this city a scene of horror and contempt, so that every passer-by will be horror-struck and jeer in contempt at the sight of its wounds. 9   I will compel men to eat the flesh of their sons and their daughters; they shall devour one another's flesh in the dire straits to which their enemies and those who would kill them will reduce them in the siege. 10   Then you must shatter the jar before the eyes of the men who have come with you and say to them, 11   These are the words of the Lord of Hosts: Thus will I shatter this people and this city as one shatters an earthen vessel so that it cannot be mended, and the dead shall be buried in Topheth because there is no room elsewhere to bury them. 12   This is what I will do to this place, says the Lord, and to those who live there: I will make this city like Topheth. 13   Because of their defilement, the houses of Jerusalem and those of the kings of Judah shall be like Topheth, every one of the houses on whose roofs men have burnt sacrifices to the host of heaven and poured drink-offerings to other gods.

14   Jeremiah came in from Topheth, where the Lord had sent him to prophesy, and stood in the court of the Lord's house. He said to all the people, These are the words of the Lord of Hosts the God of Israel: 15    I am bringing on this city and on all its blood-spattered altars every disaster with which I have threatened it, for its people have remained obstinate and refused to listen to me.

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