CLAY, earthenware — and, in the plural, POTSHERDS: the broken pieces a firing, and a lifetime of use, leave behind. It names the material of Jeremiah's flask ('a vessel of cheres,' 19:1) and, almost certainly, the gate he carries it through — sha'ar ha-charsit (19:2), 'the Potsherd Gate,' the industrial quarter's own name for its rubbish, opening exactly where the potters' broken rejects were thrown out. ⚠️ The gate's name is one of the Bible's small, genuine puzzles: the consonants are written one way and traditionally read another, a ketiv/qere pair, and the shelf itself divides on what it even means. KJV, apparently hearing a different sense of the same letters (cheres, 'sun'), reads 'the east gate'; ASV simply transliterates, 'the gate Harsith'; Douay, following the Vulgate, reads 'the earthen gate.' This translation follows the reading that fits the scene it stands in: a flask of fired clay, broken at the gate named for broken clay. → first discussed at Jer 19:2