Under the type of breaking a potter's vessel, the prophet foresheweth
the desolation of the Jews for their sins.
19:1. Thus saith the Lord: Go, and take a potter's earthen bottle, and
take of the ancients of the people, and of the ancients of the priests:
19:2. And go forth into the valley of the son of Ennom, which is by the
entry of the earthen gate: and there thou shalt proclaim the words that
I shall tell thee.
19:3. And thou shalt say: Hear the word of the Lord, O ye kings of
Juda, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus saith the Lord of hosts,
the God of Israel: Behold I will bring an affliction upon this place:
so that whosoever shall hear it, his ears shall tingle:
19:4. Because they have forsaken me, and have profaned this place : and
have sacrificed therein to strange gods, whom neither they nor their
fathers knew, nor the kings of Juda: and they have filled this place
with the blood of innocents.
19:5. And they have built the high places of Baalim, to burn their
children with fire for a holocaust to Baalim: which I did not command,
nor speak of, neither did it once come into my mind.
19:6. Therefore behold the days come, saith the Lord, that this place
shall no more be called Topheth, nor the valley of the son of Ennom,
but the valley of slaughter.
19:7. And I will defeat the counsel of Juda and of Jerusalem in this
place: and I will destroy them with the sword in the sight of their
enemies, and by the hands of them that seek their lives: and I will
give their carcasses to be meat for the fowls of the air, and for the
beasts of the earth.
19:8. And I will make this city an astonishment, and a hissing: every
one that shall pass by it, shall be astonished, and shall hiss because
of all the plagues thereof.
19:9. And I will feed them with the flesh of their sons, and with the
flesh of their daughters: and they shall eat every one the flesh of his
friend in the siege, and in the distress wherewith their enemies, and
they that seek their lives, shall straiten them.
19:10. And thou shalt break the bottle in the sight of the men that
shall go with thee.
19:11. And thou shalt say to them: Thus saith the Lord of hosts: Even
so will I break this people, and this city, as the potter's vessel is
broken, which cannot be made whole again: and they shall be buried in
Topheth, because there is no other place to bury in.
19:12. Thus will I do to this place, saith the Lord, and to the
inhabitants thereof: and I will make this city as Topheth.
19:13. And the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Juda
shall be unclean as the place of Topheth: all the houses upon whose
roofs they have sacrificed to all the host of heaven, and have poured
out drink offerings to strange gods.
19:14. Then Jeremias came from Topheth, whither the Lord had sent him
to prophesy, and he stood in the court of the house of the Lord, and
said to all the people:
19:15. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold I will
bring in upon this city, and upon all the cities thereof all the evils
that I have spoken against it: because they have hardened their necks,
that they might not hear my words.