1
Thus said YHWH: “Go, and you have acquired a potter’s earthen vessel, and from [the] elderly of the people, and from [the] elderly of the priests,
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and you have gone forth to the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, that [is] at the opening of the gate of the pottery, and have proclaimed there the words that I speak to you,
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and have said, Hear a word of YHWH, you kings of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem!” Thus said YHWH of Hosts, God of Israel: “Behold, I am bringing in evil on this place, at which the ears of everyone who is hearing it tingles,
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because that they have forsaken Me, and make known this place, and make incense in it to other gods, that they did not know, they and their fathers, and the kings of Judah, and they have filled this place [with] innocent blood,
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and have built the high places of Ba‘al to burn their sons with fire, burnt-offerings to Ba‘al, that I did not command, nor spoke of, nor did it come up on My heart.
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Therefore, behold, days are coming,” a declaration of YHWH, “and this place is no longer called The Tophet and Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but Valley of the Slaughter.
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And I have made void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place, and have caused them to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hand of those seeking their life, and I have given their carcass for food to the bird of the heavens, and to the beast of the earth,
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and I have made this city for a desolation, and for a hissing, everyone passing by it is astonished, and hisses for all its plagues.
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And I have caused them to eat the flesh of their sons, and the flesh of their daughters, and they each eat the flesh of his friend, in the siege and in the constriction with which their enemies constrict them, and those seeking their life.”
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“And you have broken the bottle before the eyes of the men who are going with you,
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and have said to them, Thus said YHWH of Hosts: Thus I break this people and this city, as one breaks the potter’s vessel, that is not able to be repaired again, and in Tophet they bury—without place to bury;
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so I do to this place—a declaration of YHWH—and to its inhabitants, so as to make this city as Tophet;
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and the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah, have been as the place of Tophet—defiled, even all the houses on whose roofs they have made incense to all the host of the heavens, so as to pour out oblations to other gods.”
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And Jeremiah comes in from Tophet, to where YHWH had sent him to prophesy, and he stands in the court of the house of YHWH, and he says to all the people:
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“Thus said YHWH of Hosts, God of Israel: Behold, I am bringing to this city, and on all its cities, all the calamity that I have spoken against it, for they have hardened their neck to not hear My words!”
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