The Broken Clay Jar
Jeremiah 19Thus said YHWH, “Go, and buy a clay jay from a potter and take some of the elders of the people and of the elders of the priests 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. Say, ‘Y’all must listen the word of YHWH, kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: YHWH Almighty, the God of Israel says, “Look, I will bring disaster on this place that will make the ears tingle of everyone hears. 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 ancestors, and the kings of Judah—and have filled this place with the blood of innocents, 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. Therefore, the days are coming,” says YHWH, “when this place will no more be called ‘Topheth’, nor ‘The Valley of the son of Hinnom’, but ‘The valley of Slaughter’.
“‘“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. 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. I 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.”’
“Then you are to break the jar in the sight of those who go with you, and tell them, ‘YHWH Almighty says: “Even so I will break this people and this city as one breaks a potter’s jar, so that it can’t be made whole again. They will bury in Topheth until there is no place to bury. This is what I will do to this place,” says YHWH, “and to its inhabitants, even making this city as Topheth. 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.”’”
Then Jeremiah came from Topheth, where YHWH had sent him to prophesy, and he stood in the court of the house of YHWH, and said to all the people: “YHWH Almighty, the God of Israel says, ‘Look! I am going to bring on this city and on all its towns all the disaster that I have pronounced against it, because they have made their neck stiff, that they may not hear my words.’”