1Yahweh said, "Go and buy an earthenware jar from a potter. Take some of the elders of the people and some of the senior priests with you.
2Go out to the Valley of Ben Hinnom, near the entrance of the Potsherd Gate, and proclaim there the words I tell you.
3Say, 'Listen to Yahweh's message, kings of Judah and residents of Jerusalem. Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, says: "Behold, I am bringing such disaster on this place that everyone who hears about it will have ringing in their ears!"'
4Because they abandoned me and turned this place into a foreign one. They burned incense here to other gods that neither they, their ancestors, nor the kings of Judah knew. They have filled this place with the blood of innocent people.
5They built high places for Baal to burn their sons as offerings to Baal. I did not command this, nor did I speak of it, nor did it ever enter my mind.
6Therefore, listen, the time is coming,” says Yahweh, “when this place will no longer be called Topheth or the Valley of Ben Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.
7“‘“Here in this place, I will bring to nothing the plans of Judah and Jerusalem. I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies and by the power of those who seek their lives. I will give their dead bodies as food for the birds of the sky and for the animals of the earth.
8I will make this city an astonishing sight and an object of scorn. Everyone who passes by will be astonished and will hiss because of all its disasters.
9I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters. Everyone will eat the flesh of his friend during the siege and the hardship that their enemies and those who seek their lives will inflict on them.”’
10“Then you must break the jar in front of the men who go with you,
11and tell them, ‘Yahweh of Armies says: “Just as this pottery jar is broken and cannot be repaired, so I will break these people and this city. People will bury bodies in Topheth until there is no more room to bury.
12‘I will do this to this place and its inhabitants,’” says Yahweh, “‘making this city like Topheth.
13“‘And the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah, which are now unclean, will be like the place of Topheth. This includes all the houses on whose roofs they burned incense to all the stars in the sky and poured out drink offerings to other gods.’”
14Then Jeremiah came from Topheth, where Yahweh had sent him to speak prophecies. He stood in the courtyard of Yahweh’s house and said to all the people,
15“Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, says, ‘Listen, I am bringing on this city and all its towns all the disaster that I have declared against it, because they have been stubborn and refused to listen to my words.’”