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That will happen because Judah's people have turned away from me. They worship foreign gods in this place. They have offered sacrifices to those gods. They are gods that their ancestors did not know about. The kings of Judah never knew about them either. In this place, Judah's people have killed people who did not deserve to die. They have built altars here to give honour to Baal. They light fires to give their children to Baal as burnt offerings. I never even thought about it. I never commanded my people to offer those kinds of sacrifices. I never even thought about it. So I tell you this: A time will soon come when people do not call this place Topheth or Ben-Hinnom Valley. Instead, they will call it Death Valley.[a]

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Footnotes

  1. 19:6 See Jeremiah 7:31-32. The Lord had said that his people must not burn their children as offerings to the gods. See Leviticus 18:21. Ben-Hinnom Valley was a place outside the walls of Jerusalem. People put their rubbish there. The Lord was saying that people's dead bodies would also lie there on the ground.

For they have forsaken(A) me and made this a place of foreign gods(B); they have burned incense(C) in it to gods that neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent.(D) They have built the high places of Baal to burn their children(E) in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind.(F) So beware, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when people will no longer call this place Topheth(G) or the Valley of Ben Hinnom,(H) but the Valley of Slaughter.(I)

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