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,[ † ]Joshua 15:82 Kings 23:10Jeremiah 7:31Jeremiah 32:35 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,[ † ]Jeremiah 17:201 Samuel 3:112 Kings 21:12 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.[ † ]Deuteronomy 28:20Isaiah 65:11Jeremiah 2:13-17, 19Jeremiah 15:6Jeremiah 17:132 Kings 21:12Jeremiah 2:34Jeremiah 7:6 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.[ † ]Numbers 22:41Jeremiah 7:31Jeremiah 32:35Leviticus 18:212 Kings 17:17Psalms 106:37-38
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.[ † ]Joshua 15:8Jeremiah 7:32 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.[ † ]Leviticus 26:17Deuteronomy 28:25Jeremiah 15:2-9Psalms 79:2Jeremiah 7:33Jeremiah 16:4Jeremiah 34:20
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.[ † ]Jeremiah 18:16Jeremiah 49:13Jeremiah 50:13 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.’[ † ]Leviticus 26:29Deuteronomy 28:53-55Isaiah 9:20Lamentations 4:10Ezekiel 5:10
10Then you are to shatter the jar in the presence of the men who accompany you,[ † ]Jeremiah 51:63-64 11and you are to proclaim to them that this is what the Lord of Hosts says: I will shatter this nation and this city, like one shatters a potter’s jar that can never again be repaired. They will bury the dead in Topheth until there is no more room to bury them.[ † ]Psalms 2:9Isaiah 30:14Jeremiah 13:14Lamentations 4:2Revelation 2:27Jeremiah 7:32
12This is what I will do to this place and to its residents, declares the Lord. I will make this city like Topheth. 13The houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will be defiled like that place, Topheth—all the houses on whose rooftops they burned incense to all the host of heaven and poured out drink offerings to other gods.”[ † ]2 Kings 23:10Psalms 74:7Psalms 79:1Jeremiah 52:13Ezekiel 7:21-222 Kings 23:12Jeremiah 32:29Zephaniah 1:5Jeremiah 7:18Ezekiel 20:28
14Then Jeremiah returned from Topheth, where the Lord had sent him to prophesy, and he stood in the courtyard of the house of the Lord and proclaimed to all the people,[ † ]2 Chronicles 20:5Jeremiah 26:2-8 15“This is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: ‘Behold, I am about to bring on this city and on all the villages around it every disaster I have pronounced against them, because they have stiffened their necks so as not to heed My words.’”[ † ]Nehemiah 9:17-29Jeremiah 7:26Jeremiah 17:23