The Broken Jar

1Thus says Yahweh, “Go and buy a potter’s earthenware jar, and take some of the elders of the people and some of the elders of the priests. 2Then go out to the valley of Ben-hinnom, which is by the entrance of the potsherd gate, and there call out the words that I tell you 3and say, ‘Hear the word of Yahweh, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, “Behold, I am about to bring a calamity upon this place, at which the ears of everyone that hears of it will tingle. 4Because they have forsaken Me and have made this a foreign place and have burned incense in it to other gods, that neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah had ever known, and because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent 5and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, a thing which I never commanded or spoke of, nor did it ever come upon My heart, 6therefore, behold, days are coming,” declares Yahweh, “when this place will no longer be called Topheth or the valley of Ben-hinnom, but rather the valley of Slaughter. 7I will empty out the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem to the point of destruction in this place, and I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies and by the hand of those who seek their life; and I will give over their carcasses as food for the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth. 8I will also make this city an object of horror and of hissing; everyone who passes by it will be [†]horrified and hiss because of all its [†]slaughtering. 9I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh in the siege and in the distress with which their enemies and those who seek their life will distress them.”’

10“Then you are to break the jar in the sight of the men who accompany you, 11and you shall say to them, ‘Thus says Yahweh of hosts, “Just so will I break this people and this city, even as one breaks a potter’s vessel, which cannot again be repaired; and they will bury in Topheth [†]because there is no other place for burial. 12This is what I will do to this place and its inhabitants,” declares Yahweh, “so as to make this city like Topheth. 13And the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will be defiled like the place Topheth because of all the houses on whose rooftops they burned incense to all the heavenly host and poured out drink offerings to other gods.”’”

14Then Jeremiah came from Topheth, where Yahweh had sent him to prophesy; and he stood in the court of the house of Yahweh and said to all the people: 15“Thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, ‘Behold, I am about to bring on this city and all its towns the entire calamity that I have spoken against it because they have stiffened their necks so as not to hear My words.’”