("the mortar") (the article is in the Hebrew, showing it is not a proper name). The hollow in Jerusalem where the merchants carried on traffic. The deep valley between the temple and upper city, crowded with merchant bazaars (Grove): Zephaniah 1:11. Jerome makes it the valley of Siloam; "howl, ye inhabitants of Maktesh, for all the merchant people are cut down." The Tyropeon valley below Mount Acra (Rosenmuller). Better (Maurer) Jerusalem itself, embosomed amidst hills. Isaiah 22:1, "the valley of vision"; Jeremiah 22:1, "O inhabitress of the valley and rock of the plain," doomed to be the scene of its people being as it were pounded in "the mortar" (Proverbs 27:22). So Jerusalem is compared to a pot in Ezekiel 24:3,6: "set on a pot ... woe to the bloody city, to the loot whose scum is therein."