Here another symbol is introduced—a symbolic phrase rather than a symbolic action. The first symbol referred to the people as a whole; the second represents the fate of the individual members of the people.
The words, Thus saith the lord God of Israel, are omitted in the Septuagint, and certainly the form of the following phrase seems hardly worthy of so solemn an introduction. Every bottle. It is an earthenware bottle, or pitcher, which seems from Jeremiah 13:13 to be meant (comp.
Isaiah 30:14), though the Septuagint renders here ἀσκός. The kings that sit upon David's throne; rather, that sit for David upon his throne; i.e. as David's heirs and successors. The plural "kings" is to include all the kings who reigned during the final period of impending ruin.
With drunkenness. The effect of the "wine-cup of [the Divine] fury" (Jeremiah 25:15). Dash them one against another. This is merely the development of the figure of the pitchers; not a prediction of civil war.
The pitchers, when cast down, must of course fall together into pieces.