11:3 cauldron . . . meat. The leadership of Jerusalem had already been deported by Nebuchadnezzar in 597 b.c.; this deportation included much of the royal family, the leaders of the military, and the craftsmen, leaving only “the poorest people of the land” (2 Kin. 24:13–16). Those who rose to prominence in the absence of the earlier ruling class appear to have had delusions of grandeur. The analogy they used of a cauldron and meat seems to mean that they considered those who had been deported from the city as the waste parts of a butchered animal, while they were the best parts.