¹Like this Yahweh said: Go and buy a flask from a potter of earthenware, and take some of the elders of the people, and some of the elders of the priests.

²Go out to the valley of Ben Hinnom, which is at the door of the gate of the Potsherd, and call out there the words that I will speak to you.

³You will say: Hear the word of Yahweh, kings of Judah and those dwelling in Jerusalem. Like this Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, has said: Behold, I am about to bring a disaster upon this place, so that everyone who hears of it, his ears will tingle.

⁴Because they have forsaken me and have estranged this place, and have made sacrifices smoke in it to other gods whom they did not know, they and their fathers and the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of the innocent.

⁵And they have built the high places of the Baal, to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to the Baal, which I did not command and did not speak, and it did not come up on my heart.

⁶Therefore, behold, days are coming, the utterance of Yahweh, when this place will not be called again Topheth, or the valley of Ben Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter.

⁷I will empty out the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place, and I will make them fall by the sword before the face of their enemies and by the hand of those who seek their being, and I will set their carcasses as food for the birds of the skies and for the livestock of the land.

⁸I will make this city a desolation and a hissing; everyone who passes by it will be appalled and will hiss over all its wounds.

⁹I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and each man will eat the flesh of his neighbor, in the siege and in the distress with which their enemies and those who seek their being will press them.

¹⁰Then you shall break the jar before the eyes of the men who go with you.

¹¹You shall say to them: Thus says Yahweh of hosts: Just so I will break this people and this city, as one breaks the vessel of the potter, which cannot be mended again; and they will bury in Topheth, because there is no place to bury.

¹²So I will do to this place, the utterance of Yahweh, and to its dwellers, making this city like Topheth.

¹³The houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will become like the place of Topheth, unclean: all the houses on whose roofs they made sacrifices smoke for all the host of the skies and poured out drink offerings to other gods.

¹⁴Jeremiah came from Topheth, where Yahweh had sent him to prophesy and stood in the court of the house of Yahweh and said to all the people:

¹⁵Thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I am bringing upon this city and upon all its cities all the evil that I have spoken against it, because they have stiffened their necks so as not to hear my words.