Words in italic type have been added for clarity. They are not found in the original Hebrew or Aramaic.

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Jeremiah 19

The Sign of the Broken Flask

Jeremiah 19:¹ Thus says the Lord: “Go and get a potter’s earthen flask, and take some of the elders of the people and some of the elders of the priests.

Jeremiah 19:² And go out to the Valley of the Son of Hinnom (Sheol/Hell), which is by the entry of the Potsherd Gate; and proclaim there the words that I will tell you,

Jeremiah 19:³ 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 will bring such a catastrophe on this place, that whoever hears of it, his ears will tingle.

Jeremiah 19:⁴ “Because they have forsaken Me and made this an alien (foreign) place, because they have burned incense in it to other gods whom neither they, their fathers, nor the kings of Judah have known, and have filled this place with the blood of the innocents.

• The phrase “the innocents is a reference to children
• When Herod killed all the boys two and under in Bethlehem was called the slaughter of the innocents.

Jeremiah 19:⁵ (they have also built the high places of Baal, to [burn their sons with fire] for burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or speak, nor did it come into My mind),

Jeremiah 19:⁶ therefore behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “that this place shall no more be called Tophet or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.

Jeremiah 19:⁷ And I will make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place, and I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies and by the hands of those who seek their lives; their corpses I will give as meat for the birds of the heaven and for the beasts of the earth.

Jeremiah 19:⁸ I will make this city desolate and a hissing; everyone who passes by it will be astonished and hiss because of all its plagues.

Jeremiah 19:⁹ And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and everyone shall eat the flesh of his friend in the siege and in the desperation with which their enemies and those who seek their lives shall drive them to despair.” ’

• ^{Two hundred years earlier Ben Hadad II laid seige to Samaria causing a great famine, one like the famine Jeremiah is warning Judah will happen to them:
  II Kings 6:26 Then, as the king of Israel (Jehoram ie Joram 852-841 BC) was passing by on the wall, a woman cried out to him, saying, “Help, my lord, O king!”
  27 And he said, “If the Lord does not help you, where can I find help for you? From the threshing floor or from the winepress?” 28 Then the king said to her, “What is troubling you?”
  And she answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.’ 29 So we boiled my son, and ate him. And I said to her on the next day, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him’; but she has hidden her son.”
  30 Now it happened, when the king heard the words of the woman, that he tore his clothes; and as he passed by on the wall, the people looked, and there underneath he had sackcloth on his body.}

Jeremiah 19:¹⁰ “Then you shall break the flask in the sight of the men who go with you,

Jeremiah 19:¹¹ and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Even so I will break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter’s vessel, which cannot be made whole (restored) again; and they shall bury them in Tophet till there is no place to bury.

See Topic: Biblical Materials – Clay

Jeremiah 19:¹² Thus I will do to this place,” says the Lord, “and to its inhabitants, and make this city like Tophet.

Jeremiah 19:¹³ And the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah shall be defiled like the place of Tophet, because of all the houses on whose roofs they have burned incense to all the host of heaven, and poured out drink offerings to other gods.” ’ ”

Jeremiah 19:¹⁴ Then Jeremiah came from Tophet, 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,

Jeremiah 19:¹⁵ “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: ‘Behold, I will bring on this city and on all her towns all the doom that I have pronounced against it, because they have stiffened their necks that they might not hear My words.’ ”