Ezekiel 24:3 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Set on a pot— The pot signifies Jerusalem, the flesh and pieces the citizens, and the fire and water the calamities which they were to suffer. When the subject required secrecy, the apologue was gradually changed by faint and far-fetched allusions into a parable, on set purpose to throw obscurity over the information. We find innumerable instances of this mode of speech in scripture, and this of the pot was one. In this manner was the parable employed both among the Orientals and Greeks; and thus the Jews understood it, as appears by the complaint of this prophet, chap. Ezekiel 20:49 and by the denunciation of our Lord himself, Luke 8:9 and thus that great master of Grecian eloquence, Demetrius Phalereus, explains it. "The word is used, says he, as a covering and disguise to the discourse." Should it be objected, that the image employed by our prophet is low, we should recollect that he was likewise a priest; that he borrowed it from the sacred rites, by no means suspecting that what had a relation to the holy usages of the temple could ever be esteemed disgraceful or low. See Div. Leg. vol. 3: and Bishop Lowth's tenth Prelection.