1 Thus says the LORD: "Go and get a potter's earthenware jug, and take with you some of the elders of the people and of the elders of the priests,
2 and go out to the Valley of the Son of Hinnom at the opening of the Potsherd Gate, and call out there the words I will speak to you.
3 Say, 'Hear the word of the LORD, kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: See, I am bringing evil on this place, such that the ears of anyone who hears of it will ring.
4 For they have abandoned me and made this place alien; they have made offerings in it to other gods whom neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of innocents.
5 They have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, a thing I did not command or speak of, and it never came into my mind.
6 Therefore the days are coming, declares the LORD, when this place will no more be called Topheth or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.
7 In this place I will drain away the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem; I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies and by the hand of those who seek their life, and I will give their dead bodies as food to the birds of the heavens and the beasts of the earth.
8 I will make this city a horror and a thing to hiss at; all who pass by it will be appalled and hiss over all its blows.
9 I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters; each will eat his neighbor's flesh in the siege and the straits into which their enemies and those who seek their life will squeeze them.'
10 "Then break the jug before the eyes of the men who go with you,
11 and say to them, 'Thus says the LORD of hosts: Just so will I break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter's vessel that can no longer be repaired. In Topheth they will bury, for lack of room to bury.
12 That is what I will do to this place, declares the LORD, and to its inhabitants, making this city like Topheth.
13 The houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will be defiled like the place of Topheth, all the houses on whose roofs they made offerings to all the host of the heavens and poured out drink offerings to other gods.'"
14 When Jeremiah came back from Topheth, where the LORD had sent him to prophesy, he stood in the court of the house of the LORD and said to all the people,
15 "Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: See, I am bringing on this city and on all its towns all the evil I have spoken against it, because they have hardened their neck so as not to listen to my words."