The Broken Jar

1Thus says YHWH: “Go and acquire from a potter a clay jar, and take 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 by the entrance of the Gate of the Potsherd,

and proclaim there the words that I speak to you. 3And you shall say, ‘Hear the word of YHWH, O kings of Judah and dwellers of Jerusalem! Thus says YHWH of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold! I am bringing such disaster on this place, that whoever hears of it, his ears will tingle, 4because that they have forsaken Me and made foreign this the place and burned incense in it to other gods, whom they have not known—they and not their fathers and not the kings of Judah. And they have filled this place with the blood of innocents! 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 and did not speak, and it did not come upon My heart!

6Therefore, behold, the days are coming, a declaration of YHWH, that this place will no longer be called Tophet, or the Valley of Ben-hinnom, but instead the Valley of the Slaughter. 7And I will ruin† the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place, and I will cause them to fall by the sword before the face of their enemies and by the hands of those seeking their soul, and I will give their carcass as food for the bird of the heavens and for the beast of the earth!

8And I will set this city as a desolation and a hissing;† all passing by her will be astonished and will hiss over all her wounds. 9And I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and each man shall eat the flesh of his neighbor in the siege and in the distress with which their enemies shall press against them and those seeking their soul!’

10And you shall break the flask before the eyes of the men who go with you. 11And you shall say to them—thus says YHWH of Hosts: Like this I will break this people and this city, just like one breaks a potter’s vessel, which is not able to be made whole again; and in Tophet they shall bury them, until there is no place to bury.

12Thus I will do to this place, a declaration of YHWH, and to its dwellers, so as to give this city to be like Tophet! 13And the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah will be like the place of Tophet, the defiled place, even all the houses on whose roofs they burned incense to all the host of the heavens and poured out drink offerings to other gods.

14And Jeremiah came from Tophet, where YHWH had sent him there to prophesy, and he stood in the court of the house of YHWH and said to all the people, 15“Thus says YHWH of Hosts, the God of Israel: ‘Behold, I am bringing on this city and on all her towns all the disaster that I have spoken against her, because they have stiffened their necks, that they might not hear My words.’”