 1 Thus says the Lord: Go and get a potter's earthen jar, and assemble from the elders of the people and of the elders of the priests. 2 Go out to the valley of the son of Hinnom by the entry of Potsherd Gate. And there declare the words that I shall tell you. 3 Say, Hear the Word of the Lord, O kings of Judah, and people of Jerusalem. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I will bring evil on this place, which shall cause the ears of him who hears it to tingle. 4 Because they have forsaken me, and have made this place famous and have burned incense in it to other gods whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocents. 5 They have also built the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings to Baal, which I never commanded nor spoke, nor did it come into my mind. 6 Therefore the days are coming, says the Lord, that this place will no longer be called Tophet or the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter. 7 I will make the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem come to nothing in this place, and I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hands of those who seek their lives. And I will give their dead bodies to be food for the birds of the heavens, and for the animals of the earth. 8 I will make this city a waste and a hissing. Everyone who passes by shall be amazed and shall hiss because of all its plagues. 9 I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall each one eat the flesh of his friend in the siege and distress, with which their enemies and those who seek their lives shall distress them. 10 Then you shall break the jar before the eyes of the men who go with you. 11 Say to them, Thus says the Lord of hosts, Even so I will break this people of this city as one breaks a potter's vessel that cannot be made whole again. They will bury them in Tophet until there is no place left to bury. 12 I will do this to this place, says the Lord, and to its people, and make this city as Tophet. 13 The houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah, shall be as defiled as the place of Tophet, because of all the houses on whose roofs they have burned incense to all the host of the heavens, and have poured out drink offerings to other gods. 14 Then Jeremiah came from Tophet, where the Lord had sent him to prophesy. And he stood in the court of the Lord's house, and said to all the people, 15 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will bring on this city and on all its towns all the evil that I have spoken against it, because they have hardened their necks so that they might not hear my words.
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