Thus saith the LORD, Go and get a potter's earthen bottle, and take of the ancients of the people, and of the ancients of the priests;
Referred, by Maurer, etc., to the beginning of Zedekiah's reign.
Bottle - Hebrew, baqbuk, so called from the gurgling sound which it makes when being emptied.
Take of the ancients - elders. As witnesses of the symbolic action (Jeremiah 19:10; Isaiah 8:1-2), that the Jews might not afterward plead ignorance of the prophecy.
Of the ancients of the people, and of the ancients of the priests - the 72 elders composing the Sanhedrim, or Great Council, were partly taken from "the priests," partly from the other tribes, i:e., "the people;" the former presiding over spiritual matters, the latter over civil: the seventy-two represented the whole people.