Jeremiah 19 AMPC

1. THUS SAYS the Lord: Go and get a potter's earthen bottle, and take some of the old people and some of the elderly priests

2. And go out to the Valley of Ben-hinnom [son of Hinnom], which is by the entrance of the Potsherd Gate; and proclaim there the words that I shall tell you,

3. And say, Hear the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I am going to bring such evil upon this place that the ears of whoever hears of it will tingle.

4. Because the people have forsaken Me and have estranged and profaned this place [Jerusalem] by burning incense in it to other gods that neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and because they have filled this place with the blood of innocents

5. And have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I commanded not nor spoke of it, nor did it come into My mind and heart–

6. Therefore, behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when this place shall no more be called Topheth or the Valley of Ben-hinnom [son of Hinnom], but the Valley of Slaughter. [Jer. 7:31-32.]

7. And I will pour out and make void the counsel and the plans of [the men of] Judah and Jerusalem in this place, and I will cause their people to fall by the sword before their enemies and by the hands of those who seek their lives, and their dead bodies I will give to be food for the birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth.

8. And I will make this city an astonishment and a horror and a hissing; everyone who passes by it will be horrified and will hiss [in scorn] because of all its plagues and disasters.

9. And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and their daughters, and they shall eat each one the flesh of his neighbor and friend in the siege and in the distress with which their enemies and those who seek their lives distress them.

10. Then you shall break the bottle in the sight of the men who accompany you,

11. And say to them, Thus said the Lord of hosts: Even so will I break this people and this city as one breaks a potter's vessel, so that it cannot be mended. Men will bury in Topheth because there will be no other place for burial and until there is no more room to bury.

12. Thus will I do to this place, says the Lord, and to its inhabitants; and I will even make this city like Topheth.

13. And the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah, which are defiled, shall be like the place of Topheth–even all the houses upon whose roofs incense has been burned to all the host of the heavens and drink offerings have been poured out to other gods. [Acts 7:42, 43.]

14. Then came Jeremiah from Topheth, where the Lord had sent him to prophesy, and he stood in the court of the Lord's house and said to all the people,

15. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will bring upon this city and upon all its towns all the evil that I have pronounced against it, because they have stiffened their necks, refusing to hear My words.