The broken jar
1 This was an order of Yahweh to Jeremiah, “Go and buy a jar from the potter. Take with you some elders of the people and a few senior priests,
2 and go out to the valley of Ben-Hinnom at the entrance to the Potsherd Gate. Proclaim there what I tell you.
3 Say this: Hear the word of Yahweh, kings of Judah and citizens of Jeru salem! Yahweh the God of hosts and the God of Israel is the one who speaks. I am about to send a disas ter upon this place that will make the ears of those who hear it tingle.
4 Here they have forsaken me, offering incense to foreign gods that neither they, their ancestors nor the kings of Judah have known. They have profaned this place by filling it with the blood of the innocent.
5 They have put up high places for Baal to burn their children in fire as a sacrifice. This is something that I have never commanded them to do, much less conceived in my mind.
6 ‘Hence, I, Yahweh, tell you now that the days will surely come when this place will no longer be called Topheth or the Valley of Ben Hinnom, but the Valley of Massacre.
7 In this place I will frustrate the plans of Judah and Jerusalem and let them be slain by their enemies – the very people who have doggedly sought their lives. Then, I will commit their corpses to the birds and the beasts as food.
8 I will transform this city into a horrible wasteland – an object of scorn and a panorama of horror that will shock passers-by and make them kiss upon witnessing the terrible catastrophe!
9 The city will be surrounded by the enemies who have vowed to massacre the people. No one will be able to flee from this tight siege and the people in the city will be forced to eat the flesh of one another, even that of their very own children.
10 Then, you shall break the jar before the people who have accompanied you
11 and you will tell them that I, Yahweh the God of hosts, will smash the people of this city like the shattered jar of the potter which is beyond repair. People will bury the dead even in Topheth, for there is no more space in the land to bury them.
12 This is precisely what I will do to Jerusalem and its citizens, making this city like Topheth.
13 The houses of Jeru salem and the palaces of the kings of Judah will be defiled like Topheth be cause the roofs of these houses have been used to burn incense for the stars of the skies and to pour wine-offerings for strange gods.’ ”
Confrontation in the temple
14 Then Jeremiah left Topheth where Yahweh had sent him to pro phesy, and stood in the porch of the House of Yahweh. There he told all the people,
15 “Listen to the word of Yahweh, God of Israel: I am about to bring on this city and the towns surrounding the disaster that I have already foretold, because they are a stiff-necked people and will not listen to me.”
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Comments Jeremiah, Chapter 19
• 19.14 Jeremiah is prophesying alone. Ap parently he has no followers or religious groups to help him. Some people are getting tired of always hear ing him threaten. The leaders and the priests are angry at this individual’s condemnation of a society in which they live without problems.