diff --git a/src/backend/utils/adt/jsonb_util.c b/src/backend/utils/adt/jsonb_util.c
index c8b6c15e059..e73906dc09d 100644
--- a/src/backend/utils/adt/jsonb_util.c
+++ b/src/backend/utils/adt/jsonb_util.c
@@ -277,22 +277,16 @@ compareJsonbContainers(JsonbContainer *a, JsonbContainer *b)
 		else
 		{
 			/*
-			 * It's safe to assume that the types differed, and that the va
-			 * and vb values passed were set.
-			 *
-			 * If the two values were of the same container type, then there'd
-			 * have been a chance to observe the variation in the number of
-			 * elements/pairs (when processing WJB_BEGIN_OBJECT, say). They're
-			 * either two heterogeneously-typed containers, or a container and
-			 * some scalar type.
-			 *
-			 * We don't have to consider the WJB_END_ARRAY and WJB_END_OBJECT
-			 * cases here, because we would have seen the corresponding
-			 * WJB_BEGIN_ARRAY and WJB_BEGIN_OBJECT tokens first, and
-			 * concluded that they don't match.
+			 * It's not possible for one iterator to report end of array or
+			 * object while the other one reports something else, because we
+			 * would have detected a length mismatch when we processed the
+			 * container-start tokens above.  Likewise we can't see WJB_DONE
+			 * from one but not the other.  They're either two different-type
+			 * containers, or a container and some scalar type, or two
+			 * different scalar types.  Sort on the basis of the type.
 			 */
-			Assert(ra != WJB_END_ARRAY && ra != WJB_END_OBJECT);
-			Assert(rb != WJB_END_ARRAY && rb != WJB_END_OBJECT);
+			Assert(ra != WJB_DONE && ra != WJB_END_ARRAY && ra != WJB_END_OBJECT);
+			Assert(rb != WJB_DONE && rb != WJB_END_ARRAY && rb != WJB_END_OBJECT);
 
 			Assert(va.type != vb.type);
 			Assert(va.type != jbvBinary);