Jeremiah 1:13 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

After the smaller punishment from the Lord follows this of the boiling pot, by which understand Judea and Jerusalem, as may appear by the application that they themselves make of it in a way of scorn and derision, Ezekiel 11:3,7. Some put the face of the pot for the pot itself; as the face of the cold, the face of his anger, for cold and anger itself: q.d. I see a pot coming, meaning the Babylonian army flowing in upon them, like boiling or scalding water, as some interpret it: but this seems not to be so congruous to the vision; but rather thus, the Babylonians should besiege; as a fire plays round the furnace when it is to be made boil, so should these Chaldeans begirt it, as Jeremiah 1:15, and reduce the inhabitants to most miserable extremities, with unspeakable cruelty, as if they were like flesh roasting by the fire, or boiling in a pot, as their sufferings are described, Micah 3:3. The face, or front of the pot, or furnace, the place where the fire was put in or blowed up to make it boil; as a pot, hanged in the form of a furnace, seems to be all but one and the same pot or vessel, the face of which may be easily conceived to stand toward the north, not the mouth of the pot, for that looks directly upward, unless we conceive it to be represented in the vision leaning, of which conceit there is no need. Is toward the north; indicating from whence their misery should come, Jeremiah 1:14, viz. from Chaldea, which lay north from Jerusalem.