²¹ Thus says Adonai-Tzva’ot, the God of Israel: “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat the meat! ²² For on the day that I brought your fathers out of the land of Egypt I did not speak to them nor did I command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices, ²³ but I explicitly commanded them: ‘Obey My voice and I will be your God to you and you will be My people. Walk in all the ways that I command you that it may go well with you.’ ²⁴ But they did not listen or pay attention. Instead they followed their own counsel, in the stubbornness of their evil heart. They have gone backward and not forward, ²⁵ from the day your fathers left the land of Egypt until today. Although I sent to you all My servants the prophets, daily and persistently, ²⁶ they did not listen to Me or pay attention. Rather, they stiffened their neck, doing more evil than their fathers.

²⁷ “When you tell them all these things, they will not listen to you. When you call to them, they will not answer you. ²⁸ So you will say to them, ‘This nation has not obeyed the voice of Adonai their God or received correction. Truth has perished and is cut off from their mouth. ²⁹ Cut off your hair and throw it away and take up a lamentation on the barren hills. For Adonai has spurned and cast off the generation of His wrath.”

Valley of Slaughter

³⁰ “The children of Judah have done what is evil in My sight”—it is a declaration of Adonai—“They have set their detestable things in the House that bears My Name to defile it. ³¹ They have built the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben-Hinnom to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire—which I did not command, nor did it even enter My mind. ³² Therefore, the days are soon coming,” declares Adonai, “when it will no longer be called Topheth, nor the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. For they will bury in Topheth until there is no room. ³³ The carcasses of this people will be food for the birds of the sky and for the beasts of the earth, and no one will frighten them away. ³⁴ Then I will bring an end, from the cities of Judah and from the streets of Jerusalem, to the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. For the land will be desolate.”

8 “At that time”—it is a declaration of Adonai—“the bones of the kings of Judah and the bones of his princes, the bones of the kohanim and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem will be brought out of their graves. ² They will spread them out to the sun, the moon and all the host of heaven, which they have loved and served, and after which they have walked and sought, and which they have worshipped. They will not be gathered or buried, but will be like dung on the face of the ground. ³ So death will be chosen rather than life by all the remnant that remains of this evil family that remains in all the places to which I have driven them.” It is a declaration of Adonai-Tzva’ot.

²⁴ “Days are soon coming,” declares Adonai, “when I will punish all who are circumcised and yet uncircumcised—