8. Why was the visionary cooking pot blown upon, and what was indicated by its being tilted away from the north?

⁸ We remember that Jeremiah was raised up in 647 B.C.E. and commissioned to be “prophet to the nations.” Disastrous trouble was already then brewing for Jerusalem and the land of Judah. What was being boiled in the cooking pot seen in Jeremiah’s vision was nothing good for renegade Jerusalem and the other cities of Judah. The purpose for which the cooking pot was being “blown upon” was not to cool the contents of the pot but was to fan the flames of the fire underneath this caldron. The fact that the wide mouth of the pot was tilted away from the north meant that the boiling hot contents were to be poured out upon what lay to the south. That meant Jerusalem and the land of Judah. The calamity upon them was not to come up from Egypt to their south. It would come southward by a northern route upon the doomed cities.​—Jer. 4:6, 7; 6:1, 22.

9. What spillages of the symbolic “cooking pot” did Jeremiah see poured out upon the land of Judah?

⁹ The contents of the symbolic cooking pot that Jehovah would dump out upon the land of Judah would be “all the families of the kingdoms of the north.” Babylon would therefore be the leading figure in this invasion of the land of Judah, for the Babylonian Empire was then rising to become the Third World Power of Bible prophecy. Jeremiah as prophet had to wait 27 years before he saw that symbolic cooking pot pour out its first invasion of the land of Judah by Babylon’s military forces, in 620 B.C.E. Three years later there came another spillage of the symbolic cooking pot with a second invasion by the Babylonians, and Jeremiah finally came under the kingship of Zedekiah the vassal of Emperor Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Then came Zedekiah’s revolt, and in 609 B.C.E. the symbolic cooking pot was completely turned over for a third and final spillage of Babylonian hordes upon the cities of Judah.a In the summer of 607 B.C.E. the “calamity” reached its peak in the destruction of Jerusalem. By early autumn of that year all the land of Judah was left desolate.

12. Of what did Jehovah forewarn Jeremiah, and what promise did Jehovah give him, for our encouragement also?

¹² Jeremiah of old had to point out that Jehovah was justified in pouring out national calamity upon the Israelites for breaking their holy covenant with him. Jehovah knew that what he began commanding Jeremiah in 647 B.C.E. to speak to the inhabitants of the land of Judah would not please the majority. So he forewarned Jeremiah by frankly telling him that the kings of the land, the princes, the priests and the people of Judah would fight against him. His very life would be threatened. So, what if Jehovah had not promised the young prophet that all these foes would not prevail against him? Would he have had the heart to carry on doggedly for 40 years as Jehovah’s “prophet to the nations” and finally see his vicious enemies go down in defeat?