19 Thus says the LORD: “Go and buy an earthen bottle of a potter, and take from the elders of the people, and from the elders of the priests,

² “and go forth to the valley of Ben-Hinnom, which is by the entry of the East Gate. And you shall preach there the Words that I shall tell you,

³ “and shall say, ‘Hear the Word of the LORD, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem! Thus says the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel: “Behold, I will bring a plague upon this place of which whoever hears, his ears shall tingle,

⁴ “because they have forsaken Me and profaned this place, and have burnt incense in it to other gods, whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah. They have also filled this place with the blood of innocents.

⁵ “And they have built the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not Command. Nor did I speak it. Nor did it come into My mind.

⁶ “Therefore, behold. The days come,” says the LORD, “that this place shall no longer be called Topheth, or the valley of Ben-Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.

⁷ “And I will bring the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem to nothing 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 lives. And I will give their carcasses to be food for the birds of the sky, and to the beasts of the field.

⁸ “And I will make this city desolate, and a hissing, so that everyone who passes by it shall be astonished and hiss because of all its plagues.

⁹ “And I will feed them with the flesh of their sons, and with the flesh of their daughters. And everyone shall eat the flesh of his friend in the siege and distress with which their enemies, who seek their lives, shall constrain them.

¹⁰ “Then you shall break the bottle in the sight of the men that go with you,

¹¹ “and shall say to them, ‘Thus says the LORD of Hosts: “Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter’s vessel that cannot be made whole again. And they shall bury them in Topheth, until there is no place to bury.

¹² “Thus will I do to this place,” says the LORD, “and to its inhabitants. And I will make this city like Topheth.

¹³ “For the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah shall be defiled, as the place of Topheth, because of all the houses upon whose roofs they have burnt incense to all the host of heaven and poured out drink offerings to other gods.”’”

¹⁴ Then Jeremiah came from Topheth, where the LORD had sent him to prophesy. And he stood in the court of the LORD’s House, and said to all the people,

¹⁵ “Thus says the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel: ‘Behold, I will bring upon this city, and upon all her towns, all the plagues that I have pronounced against it, because they have hardened their necks and would not hear My Words!’”