Jeremiah 19:3-9 ▼

3 |You are to say, 'Hear this message from the LORD, you kings of Judah and residents of Jerusalem! |'This is what the LORD of the Heavenly Armies, the God of Israel, says: |I'm about to bring a disaster on this place that will make the ears of all who hear about it tingle.

4 For they have forsaken me and have treated this place as foreign. In it they have burned incense to other gods that neither they, their ancestors, nor the kings of Judah knew. They have also filled this place with the blood of innocent people.

5 They built the high places for Baal to burn their children in the fire as a burnt offering to Baal—something I didn't command, didn't say, nor did it ever enter my mind!

6 |'|Therefore, days are coming,| declares the LORD, |when this place will no longer be called Topheth, or the Valley of Hinnom, but rather the Valley of Slaughter.

7 I'll shatter the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place, and I'll make them fall by the sword before their enemies and at the hands of those seeking their lives. I'll give their dead bodies as food to the birds of the sky and to the animals of the land.

8 I'll make this city into a desolate place and an object of scorn. All who pass by it will be astonished and will scoff because of all its wounds.

9 I'll cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and people will eat the flesh of their neighbors in the siege and in the distress to which their enemies and those seeking their lives will subject them.|'|