Jeremiah (1-31) 19:10 Commentary and Bible Study

‘Then shalt thou break the bottle in the sight of the men that go with thee.’ This is the same bottle or flask that Jeremiah was told to take in verse 1 of this chapter. It is now to be broken in a symbolic act. It clearly stands for Judah and Jerusalem – ‘Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaketh a potter's vessel, that cannot be made whole again – and the message is that Judah is beyond repair. There have been too many ignored warnings, and what God does to them now will be a final judgment from which many will not recover. The whole of the city of Jerusalem is going to be made like the area outside the city where the refuse was evidently burnt. Jerusalem is going to be handed over to cruel enemies who will destroy it totally. Tophet is defiled because of the atrocities that have taken place there with the human sacrifices to idols, but the whole city is going to be defiled by the judgment of the Lord, and a nation without mercy is going to have them totally in its power. Again the punishment fits the crime, and as the people of Jerusalem had burnt incense to all the false gods of the nations around them, so God is going to defile their houses and the houses of the kings of Judah, by handing them over to their enemies to be sacked and destroyed. The city will be in ruins after this attack.