Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 19:10

"Then shalt thou break the bottle in the sight of the men that go with thee," — Jeremiah 19:10 (ASV)

Then you shall break the bottle ... —Those who heard the prophet and saw his act were not unfamiliar with the imagery. The words of Psalm 2:9 had portrayed the Messianic king as ruling over the nations, even as breaking them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. But it was a new and strange thing for them to hear these words applied to themselves, to see their own nation treated not as the potter’s clay that could be remodeled , either for a nobler, or, at least, for some serviceable use, but as the vessel which, once broken, could never be restored.

Happily for Israel, there was a depth of Divine compassion which the parable failed to represent. The after-history showed that though, as far as that generation went, the punishment was final, and their existing polity could never be made whole again, there was yet hope for the nation. The things that were impossible with man were possible with God. The fragments of the broken vessel might be gathered from the heap of rubbish on which the prophet had flung them, and brought into a new shape, for uses less glorious, indeed, than that for which it had been originally designed, but far other than those of a mere vessel of dishonor.