Jeremiah 19:10-13 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Then shalt thou break the bottle, &c. This was intended to be a symbolical representation of the ruin threatened against them, used in order to strike the beholders more powerfully than mere words could do. Of such symbolical actions as these there are several instances in the Scriptures. Thus saith the Lord, Even so will I break this people That is, as Jeremiah breaketh the bottle: That cannot be made whole again That is, the ruin of Jerusalem shall be an utter ruin: no hand can repair it but his that broke it; and if they return to him, though he has torn, he will heal. In fact, Jerusalem was so utterly destroyed by the Chaldeans that there was little left standing of it. So that after their captivity they were obliged to build a new city in the place of the former. And they shall bury them in Tophet These words are omitted by the LXX.; till there be no place to bury Till there is no room to bury more; for the meaning is, that the whole valley of Tophet should be so filled with dead bodies, that there should be no room to lay any more there; by which is expressed the greatness of the slaughter. And even make this city as Tophet A place of slaughter. And the houses of Jerusalem shall be defiled as Tophet Namely, polluted with dead bodies. Because of the houses upon whose roofs they have burned incense The houses of the Jews were built with flat roofs, Deuteronomy 22:8, and there they dedicated altars to the host of heaven, where they could have a full view of them.