1This is what the LORD says: "Go and buy a clay bottle from a potter. Take with you some of the elders of the people and some of the elders of the priests."
2"Go out to the valley of the son of Hinnom, which is by the entrance of the east gate. There proclaim the words that I tell you."
3"Say, 'Hear the word of the LORD, kings of Judah and people of Jerusalem. This is what the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, says: Look, I will bring disaster on this place, and the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle.'"
4"'Because they have forsaken me, and have made this place strange to me. They have burned incense here to other gods that neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah have known, and they have filled this place with the blood of innocent people.'"
5"'They have also built the high places of Baal, to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal. I never commanded that. I never spoke of it. It never came into my mind.'"
6"'So look, the days are coming, says the LORD, when this place will no longer be called Tophet, or The valley of the son of Hinnom, but The valley of slaughter.'"
7"'In this place I will make the plans of Judah and Jerusalem come to nothing. I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies, by the hands of those who want to take their lives. I will give their dead bodies as food to the birds of the sky and to the beasts of the earth.'"
8"'I will make this city a waste, and something people hiss at. Everyone who passes by it will be shocked and will hiss because of all its wounds.'"
9"'I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters. Each one will eat the flesh of his friend, in the siege and the distress with which their enemies, and those who want to take their lives, will press them in.'"
10"Then you shall break the bottle in front of the men who go with you,"
11"and say to them, 'This is what the LORD of hosts says: In the same way I will break this people and this city, as someone breaks a potter's jar so that it cannot be mended again. And they will bury the dead in Tophet, until there is no room left to bury.'"
12"'This is what I will do to this place, says the LORD, and to the people who live in it. I will make this city like Tophet.'"
13"'The houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will be defiled like the place of Tophet, because of all the houses on whose roofs they have burned incense to all the host of heaven and poured out drink offerings to other gods.'"
14Then Jeremiah came back from Tophet, where the LORD had sent him to prophesy. He stood in the court of the LORD's house and said to all the people,
15"This is what the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, says: Look, I will bring on this city, and on all her towns, all the disaster that I have spoken against it, because they have stiffened their necks and would not hear my words."