Then shalt thou break the bottle in the sight of the men that go with thee,
Jeremiah was to take the elders of the people and the priests with him to the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, there review the apostasy of Judah, and break a potter's earthen bottle in their sight. The visible breaking was commanded in order to make God's sentence of doom plain, because the multitudes scarcely understood its awful import. It illustrated the nature of the swift-coming judgments, that God would break His people and Jerusalem as a potter's vessel is broken so that it cannot be made whole again.
Jeremiah was to take the elders of the people and the priests with him to the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, there review the apostasy of Judah, and break a potter's earthen bottle in their sight. The visible breaking was commanded in order to make God's sentence of doom plain, because the multitudes scarcely understood its awful import. It illustrated the nature of the swift-coming judgments, that God would break His people and Jerusalem as a potter's vessel is broken so that it cannot be made whole again.