“Then the Lord spoke to me again and asked, “What do you see now?” And I replied, “I see a pot of boiling water, spilling from the north.” “Yes,” the Lord said, “for terror from the north will boil out on the people of this land. Listen! I am calling the armies of the kingdoms of the north to come to Jerusalem. I, the Lord, have spoken! “They will set their thrones at the gates of the city. They will attack its walls and all the other towns of Judah. I will pronounce judgment on my people for all their evil—for deserting me and burning incense to other gods. Yes, they worship idols made with their own hands!” Jeremiah 1:13-16
God’s second confirming vision caused Jeremiah to see a boiling pot. The pot was a large kettle that was evidently sitting on a fire because it was “boiling.” The pot was tilting away from the north indicating that its contents were about to be spilled out toward the south. What was the “seething pot”? In Jeremiah’s time Egypt and Assyria were no longer a danger to the southern kingdom of Judah, but around the Fertile Crescent in the north was a boiling pot: the rising power of Babylon, which was to eventually destroy Judah.
When Jeremiah began his ministry, Assyria, not Babylon, was the dominant power in the Near East, and no doubt many of the political experts thought Jeremiah foolish to worry about Babylon in the north. But the people of Judah lived to see Assyria defeated and Egypt crippled as Babylon rose to power and Jeremiah’s words came true. Indeed, the thrones of the conquering Babylonian leaders were set in the gate of Jerusalem, and the Holy City was eventually destroyed.
The nations in the East were often in conflict, each trying to gain supremacy. First the Jewish rulers would turn to Egypt for help, then to Assyria (see Isa. 30—31; Jer. 2:18, 36); and all the while, they failed to trust the Lord and seek His help. But this vision reveals that God is in control of the nations of the world and can use them to accomplish His own purposes. The Lord was even then preparing Babylon in the north to be His servant to chasten His people.