The present prophecy Jer. 19–20 is to be taken in close connection with the preceding. Jeremiah chooses a vessel baked in the fire, and therefore incapable of being re-shaped (compare Jeremiah 18:1, note; Jeremiah 18:6, note). It is the symbol of the obdurate, of those who have taken their final form Revelation 22:11. In solemn procession he must bear the vessel out to the place of doom, the valley of Gehenna. There he was to break the vessel; and just as all the art of the potter would be of no avail to restore the broken fragments, so did God proclaim the final destruction of Jerusalem such as it then was, and of that generation which inhabited it.