it” (Jer. 18:7). When Jeremiah broke the earthen flask, his act was a symbolic reference to Yahweh’s decision to “break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter’s vessel” (Jer. 19:11). The jars in the hands of Gideon’s three hundred were “empty” (Judg. 7:16; Heb. reqim). Surely the Scribe intends a pun here, using the same Hebrew word which describes Abimelech’s “worthless” hirelings (9:4; cf. 11:3). The pun suggests that the jars were not only empty but worthless. Like the “kings of the earth”