Jeremiah 19 — Septuagint (LXX)

This is what the LORD says: Go and buy an earthenware flask from a potter, and take some of the elders of the people and some of the senior priests with you.

Then go out to the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, at the entrance of the Potsherd Gate, and proclaim there the words that I will speak to you.

Say to them: Hear the word of the LORD, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. This is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says — I am about to bring such disaster on this place that the ears of everyone who hears of it will ring.

Because they have abandoned me and made this place foreign by burning incense in it to other gods that neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah had known, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent.

They have built the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal — something I never commanded, never spoke of, and never even considered.

Therefore, the days are coming — declares the LORD — when this place will no longer be called Topheth, or the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.

I will shatter the plans of Judah and Jerusalem in this place. I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies and by the hand of those who seek their lives. I will give their corpses as food to the birds of the sky and the animals of the earth.

I will make this city a desolation and an object of scorn. Everyone who passes by it will be appalled and will hiss at all its wounds.

I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and each will eat the flesh of his neighbor during the siege and in the desperation that their enemies and those who seek their lives will inflict on them.

Then you are to shatter the flask in the sight of the men who go with you,

and say to them: This is what the LORD of Hosts says — Just so will I shatter this people and this city, as one shatters a potter's vessel that can never be mended again. They will bury the dead in Topheth until there is no room left to bury.

This is what I will do to this place — declares the LORD — and to its inhabitants: I will make this city like Topheth.

The houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will become defiled like the place of Topheth — all the houses on whose rooftops they burned incense to the whole host of heaven and poured out drink offerings to other gods.

Then Jeremiah returned 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:

This is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: I am about to bring upon this city and upon all its surrounding towns every disaster I have spoken against it, because they have stiffened their necks and refused to hear my words.