UST JER Chapter 19

Judah will be like a jar that someone smashes

19 Yahweh gave me another message. He said, “Go and purchase a clay jar from someone who makes pottery. Then take some of the elders of the people and some of the older priests with you. 2 Go out of the city to Son of Hinnom Valley, which is near the entrance of the Potsherd Gate. Then give them this message that I will tell you. 3 Say to them, ‘You kings of Judah and you people of Jerusalem, listen to what Yahweh says! Yahweh, the commander of the heavenly armies, the God of Israel, says this: Pay attention! I am about to bring a terrible disaster on this place. It will be so terrible that everyone who hears about it will be shocked. 4 I will do this because the people have abandoned me. They have turned this place into a place for worshiping foreign gods and they have burned incense here to other gods that neither they, nor their ancestors, nor the kings of Judah have known about. They have filled this place with the blood of innocent people whom they have killed. 5 They have built worship sites to honor Baal, and at those places they have burned their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal. I never commanded them to do that, I never told them to do that, and I never even thought about anyone doing that.

6 So pay attention, because a time will come when people will no longer call this place Topheth or Son of Hinnom Valley. Instead, they will call it the Valley of Slaughter. 7 In this place I will ruin the plans of the people that live in Jerusalem and the rest of Judah. I will allow their enemies to kill many of them with swords and allow those who want to kill them to succeed. Then I will let their dead bodies lie on the ground where all the scavenging birds and wild animals will eat them. 8 I will completely destroy this city so that it becomes a desolate place that people despise. Everyone who passes by it will be horrified and will gasp when they see all the destruction. 9 I will allow your enemies who want to kill you to surround the city so tightly and for so long that the food will all run out. Then the people in the city will become so desperately hungry that they will eat the flesh of their own sons and daughters, and each person will eat the flesh of his neighbor.’

10 Then Yahweh said to me, “After you say all of that, smash the jar while the people who came with you are watching. 11 Then say to them, ‘Yahweh, the commander of the heavenly armies, says this: Just as someone smashes a potter’s jar so that no one can ever put it back together, I will smash this people and this city in a similar way. People will bury the dead in Topheth until there is no more room to bury anyone else. 12 That is what I will do to this place and to the people who live here,’ declares Yahweh. ‘I will allow your enemies to desecrate this city like king Josiah caused Topheth to be a place that was unfit for people to worship me in. 13 Your enemies will desecrate the houses throughout Jerusalem and the palaces of the kings of Judah as King Josiah did to Topheth. That includes every house where you burned incense on the rooftops to honor the stars that you worshiped, and where you poured out wine as an offering to your gods.’ ”

14 Then I, Jeremiah returned from Topheth, where Yahweh had sent me to tell them that message. I went and stood in the courtyard of Yahweh’s temple and said this to all the people who had gathered there: 15 “Yahweh, the commander of the heavenly armies, the God of Israel, says this: ‘Pay attention! I am about to bring on this city and on all the towns around it every disaster that I said I would, because the people have stubbornly refused to listen to what I have said to them.’ ”