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is what the Lord says: “Go and buy a potter’s clay jug. Take along some of the elders of the people and some of the elders of the priests, 2 and go out to the Valley of Ben Hinnom, near the entrance of the Potsherd Gate, and proclaim there the words that I tell you. 3 You must say, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah and people of Jerusalem. This is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: “Behold, I am going to bring such a disaster on this place that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. 4 For they have forsaken Me and made this a place of foreign gods. They have burned incense in it to other gods that neither they, their fathers, and the kings of Judah have never known, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. 5 They have built high places to Baal on which to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings to Baal, something I did not command or speak, nor did it enter My mind.
6 “Therefore behold, the days are coming”, declares the Lord, “when this place will no longer be called Tophet or the Valley of Ben Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. 7 In this place I will ruin the plans of Judah and Jerusalem, for I will cause them to fall by the sword before the enemies, and by the hand of those who seek their lives, and I will give their carcasses up as food for the birds of the sky and for the beasts of the earth. 8 I will make this city desolate and an object of scorn. Everyone who passes by it will be astonished and scoff because of all its wounds. 9 I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and their daughters, and they will eat the flesh of each other in the siege, and in the distress imposed on them by their enemies who seek their lives.
10 “Then you are to shatter the jug in the sight of the men who go with you, 11 and say to them, ‘This is what the Lord of Hosts says: “I will shatter this people and this city, as a potter’s jug is shattered and can never be mended. They will bury the dead in Tophet until there is no more room to bury. 12 This is what I will do to this place,” says Lord, “and to its inhabitants, making this city like Tophet. 13 The houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will be defiled like that place Tophet—all of the houses on whose rooftops they have burned incense to all the heavenly host and poured out drink offering to other gods” ’.”
14 Then Jeremiah came back from Tophet, where the Lord had sent him to prophesy, and he stood in the court of the Lord’s temple and said to all the people, 15 “This is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: ‘Behold, I am about to bring on this city and on all her towns all the disaster that I have pronounced against them, because they have stiffened their necks and would not listen to My words.