Jeremiah 19
Open in the reader1This is what He-Who-Is 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 Son-of-Hinnom near the entrance of the Potsherd Gate. Proclaim there the words I speak to you,
3saying, ‘Hear the word of He-Who-Is, O kings of Praised and residents of Foundation-of-Peace. This is what He-Who-Is of Hosts, the God of Strives-with-God, 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 Praised have ever known. They have filled this place with the blood of the innocent.
5They have built high places to The-Ruler 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 He-Who-Is, when this place will no longer be called Burning-Place or the Valley of Son-of-Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.
7And in this place I will ruin the plans of Praised and Foundation-of-Peace. 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.’
10Then you are to shatter the jar in the presence of the men who accompany you,
11and you are to proclaim to them that this is what He-Who-Is 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 Burning-Place until there is no more room to bury them.
12This is what I will do to this place and to its residents, declares He-Who-Is. I will make this city like Burning-Place.
13The houses of Foundation-of-Peace and the houses of the kings of Praised will be defiled like that place, Burning-Place—all the houses on whose rooftops they burned incense to all the host of heaven and poured out drink offerings to other gods.”
14Then He-Who-Is-Will-Rise returned from Burning-Place, where He-Who-Is had sent him to prophesy, and he stood in the courtyard of the house of He-Who-Is and proclaimed to all the people,
15“This is what He-Who-Is of Hosts, the God of Strives-with-God, 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.’”