The Broken Jar

1Thus says the Lord: “Go, and take a potter’s earthen bottle from the elders of the people and from the elders of the priests. 2And go out to the valley of the son of Hinnom, which is near the entrance to the earthen gate, and there you shall proclaim the words that I will speak to you. 3And you shall say: Listen to the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah, and you inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will lead an affliction over this place, so much so that it will ring in the ears of all who hear about it. 4For they have abandoned me, and they have made this place foreign, and they have offered libations in it to foreign gods, whom neither they, nor their fathers, nor the kings of Judah have known. And they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. 5And they have built the exalted places of Baal, in order to burn their children with fire as a holocaust to Baal, something that I did not instruct or speak of, nor did it enter into my heart. 6Because of this, behold, the days are approaching, says the Lord, when this place will no longer be called Topheth, or the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. 7And I will scatter the counsel of Judah and of Jerusalem in this place. And I will overthrow them with the sword, in the sight of their enemies and by the hand of those who seek their lives. And I will give their carcasses to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the land as food. 8And I will set this city amid stupor and hissing. Everyone who passes by it will be stupefied, and they will hiss over all its wounds. 9And I will feed them with the flesh of their sons and with the flesh of their daughters. And each one of them will eat the flesh of his friend during the blockade and the embargo by which their enemies, and those who seek their lives, will enclose them.

10And you shall crush the bottle in the sight of the men who will go with you. 11And you shall say to them: Thus says the Lord of hosts: In the same way, I will crush this people and this city, just as the potter’s vessel was crushed and cannot be made whole again. And they will be buried at Topheth, because there will be no other place for burial. 12So will I do to this place and to its inhabitants, says the Lord. And I will make this city to be like Topheth. 13And the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will be unclean, just like the place of Topheth: all the houses on whose roofs they sacrificed to all the armies of heaven and poured out libations to strange gods.”

14Then Jeremiah arrived from Topheth, where the Lord had sent him to prophesy, and he stood in the atrium of the house of the Lord, and he said to all the people: 15“Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will lead over this community, and over all its cities, all the evils that I have spoken against it. For they have hardened their necks, so that they would not heed my words.”