Overview
At God's command, Jeremiah purchases a clay flask and leads civic and religious leaders to the Valley of Hinnom, where he shatters it as an enacted sign of Yahweh's irreversible judgment upon Jerusalem for its idolatry and child sacrifice, then returns to the Temple court to proclaim that every threatened evil will surely come to pass upon a people who have hardened their necks against the covenant.
Passages
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Jeremiah 19
1Thus 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; 2and 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. 3Say, ‘Hear Yahweh’s word, kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel says, “Behold, I will bring evil on this place, which whoever hears, his ears will tingle. 4Because 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, 5and 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. 6Therefore, 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 of Judah 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. 8I will make this city an astonishment and a hissing. Everyone who passes by it will be astonished and hiss because of all its plagues. 9I will cause them to eat the flesh of their 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, 11and shall tell them, ‘Yahweh of Armies says: “Even so I will break this people and this city as one breaks a potter’s vessel, that can’t be made whole again. They will bury in Topheth until there is no place to bury. 12This is what I will do to this place,” says Yahweh, “and to its inhabitants, even making this city as Topheth. 13The 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.”’”
14Then 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.’”