Jeremiah 19

¹This is what the LORD says: “Go and buy a clay jar from a potter. Take some of the elders of the people and leaders of the priests,

²and go out to the Valley of Ben-hinnom near the entrance of the Potsherd Gate. Proclaim there the words I speak to you,

³saying, ‘Hear the word of the LORD, O kings of Judah and residents of Jerusalem. This is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: I am going to bring such disaster on this place that the ears of all who hear of it will ring,

⁴because they have abandoned Me and made this a foreign place. They have burned incense in this place to other gods that neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah have ever known. They have filled this place with the blood of the innocent.

⁵They have built high places to Baal on which to burn their children in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I never commanded or mentioned, nor did it even enter My mind.

⁶So behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when this place will no longer be called Topheth or the Valley of Ben-hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.

⁷And in this place I will ruin the plans of Judah and Jerusalem. I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies, by the hands of those who seek their lives, and I will give their carcasses as food to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth.

⁸I will make this city a desolation and an object of scorn. All who pass by will be appalled and will scoff at all her wounds.

⁹I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh in the siege and distress inflicted on them by their enemies who seek their lives.’