The In-Dept Study of the Bible
Jeremiah 19
1 Thus said Yahweh, “Go, and buy a potter’s
earthen container, and take 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, which is by the entry of the gate
Harsith, and proclaim there the words that
I will tell you.
3 Say, ‘Hear Yahweh’s word, kings of Judah and
inhabitants ofJerusalem: Yahweh
of Armies, the God of Israel says, “Behold,
I will bring evil on this place, which
whoever hears, his ears will tingle.
4 Because they have forsaken me, and
have defiled this place, and have burned
incense in it to other gods that they didn’t
know—they, their fathers, and the kings of
Judah—and have filled this place with the
blood of innocents,
5 and have built the high places of Baal
to burn their children in the fire for burnt
offerings to Baal, which I didn’t command,
nor speak, which didn’t even enter into my
mind.
6 Therefore, behold, the days come,” says
Yahweh, “that this place will no more be
called ‘Topheth’, nor ‘The Valley of the son
of Hinnom’, but ‘The valley of Slaughter’.
7 “I will make the counsel ofJudah and
Jerusalem void in this place. I will cause
them to fall by the sword before their enemies,
and by the hand of those who seek
their life. I will give their dead bodies to
be food for the birds of the sky and for the
animals of the earth.
8 I will make this city an astonishment
and a hissing. Everyone who passes by it
will be astonished and hiss because of all
its plagues.
9 I will cause them to eatthe flesh oftheir
sons and the flesh of their daughters. They
will each eat the flesh of his friend in the
siege and in the distress with which their
enemies, and those who seek their life, will
distress them.
10 “Then you shall break the container in
the sight of the men who go with you,
11 and shall tell them, ‘Yahweh of Armies
says: “Even so I will break this people and
this city as onebreaks apotter’s vessel,that
can’t be made whole again. They will bury
in Topheth until there is no place to bury.
12 This is what I will do to this place,”
says Yahweh, “and to its inhabitants, even
making this city as Topheth.
13 The houses of Jerusalem and the
houses of the kings of Judah, which are
defiled, will be as the place of Topheth,
even all the houses on whose roofs they
have burned incense to all the army of the
sky and have poured out drink offerings to
other gods.
14 Then Jeremiah came from Topheth,
where Yahweh had sent him to prophesy,
and he stood in the court of Yahweh’s
house, and said to all the people:
15 “Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel
says, ‘Behold, I will bring on this city and
on all its towns all the evil that I have
pronounced against it, because they have
made their neck stiff, that they may not
hear my words.’ ”