and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord commanded me.” ¹ 

They were the potters who lived in Netaim and Gederah; they lived there and worked for the king. ¹ 

After ¹  consulting together they bought the Potter’s Field with it, as a burial place for foreigners.

“Go down at once ¹  to the potter’s house. I will speak to you further there.” ² 

So I went down to the potter’s house and found him working ¹  at his wheel. ² 

You will break them ¹  with an iron scepter; ²  you will smash them like a potter’s jar!’” ³ 

It shatters in pieces like a clay jar, so shattered to bits that none of it can be salvaged. ¹  Among its fragments one cannot find a shard large enough ²  to scoop a hot coal from a fire ³  or to skim off water from a cistern.” ⁴ 

“I, the Lord, say: ¹  ‘O nation of Israel, can I not deal with you as this potter deals with the clay? ²  In my hands, you, O nation of Israel, are just like the clay in this potter’s hand.’

ב (Bet) The precious sons of Zion were worth their weight in gold – Alas! – but now they are treated like ¹  broken clay pots, made by a potter. ² 

The Lord told Jeremiah, ¹  “Go and buy a clay jar from a potter. ²  Take with you ³  some of the leaders of the people and some of the leaders ⁴  of the priests.

Tell them the Lord who rules over all says, ¹  ‘I will do just as Jeremiah has done. ²  I will smash this nation and this city as though it were a potter’s vessel which is broken beyond repair. ³  The dead will be buried here in Topheth until there is no more room to bury them.’ ⁴ 

In that you were seeing feet and toes ¹  partly of wet clay ²  and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom. Some of the strength of iron will be in it, for you saw iron mixed with wet clay. ³ 

The Lord continued, ¹  “Now break the jar in front of those who have come here with you.

Its legs were of iron; its feet were partly of iron and partly of clay. ¹ 

Draw yourselves water for a siege! ¹  Strengthen your fortifications! Trample the mud ²  and tread the clay! Make mud bricks to strengthen your walls! ³ 

he ¹  will rule ²  them with an iron rod ³  and like clay jars he will break them to pieces, ⁴ 

The Lord then said to me, “Throw to the potter that exorbitant sum ¹  at which they valued me!” So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them to the potter ²  at the temple ³  of the Lord.

Now and then ¹  there would be something wrong ²  with the pot he was molding from the clay ³  with his hands. So he would rework ⁴  the clay into another kind of pot as he saw fit. ⁵