Jeremiah 19:3-9

The Broken Jar

³and say, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, you kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. This is what the Lord of armies, the God of Israel says: “Behold I am going to bring a disaster upon this place, at which the ears of everyone that hears of it will tingle. ⁴Since they have abandoned Me and have made this place foreign, and have burned sacrifices in it to other gods that neither they nor their forefathers nor the kings of Judah had ever known, and since they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent ⁵and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, a thing which I did not command nor speak of, nor did it ever enter My mind; ⁶therefore, behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when this place will no longer be called Topheth or the Valley of Ben-hinnom, but rather the Valley of Slaughter. ⁷And I will frustrate the planning of Judah and Jerusalem in this place, and I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies and by the hand of those who seek their life; and I will make their carcasses food for the birds of the sky and the animals of the earth. ⁸I will also turn this city into an object of horror and hissing; everyone who passes by it will be appalled and hiss because of all its disasters. ⁹And I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh during the siege and in the hardship with which their enemies and those who seek their life will torment them.” ’