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18. At the Potter's House

¹ This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: ² “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” ³ So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. ⁴ But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.

⁵ Then the word of the LORD came to me. ⁶ He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the LORD. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel. ⁷ If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, ⁸ and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. ⁹ And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, ¹⁰ and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.

¹¹ “Now therefore say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, ‘This is what the LORD says: Look! I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. So turn from your evil ways, each one of you, and reform your ways and your actions.’ ¹² But they will reply, ‘It’s no use. We will continue with our own plans; we will all follow the stubbornness of our evil hearts.’”

¹³ Therefore this is what the LORD says:

   “Inquire among the nations:
   Who has ever heard anything like this?
A most horrible thing has been done
   by Virgin Israel.
¹⁴ Does the snow of Lebanon
   ever vanish from its rocky slopes?
Do its cool waters from distant sources
   ever stop flowing? The meaning of the Hebrew for this sentence is uncertain.
¹⁵ Yet my people have forgotten me;
   they burn incense to worthless idols,
which made them stumble in their ways,
   in the ancient paths.
They made them walk in byways,
   on roads not built up.
¹⁶ Their land will be an object of horror
   and of lasting scorn;
all who pass by will be appalled
   and will shake their heads.
¹⁷ Like a wind from the east,
   I will scatter them before their enemies;
I will show them my back and not my face
   in the day of their disaster.”

¹⁸ They said, “Come, let’s make plans against Jeremiah; for the teaching of the law by the priest will not cease, nor will counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophets. So come, let’s attack him with our tongues and pay no attention to anything he says.”

    ¹⁹ Listen to me, LORD;
   hear what my accusers are saying!
²⁰ Should good be repaid with evil?
   Yet they have dug a pit for me.
Remember that I stood before you
   and spoke in their behalf
   to turn your wrath away from them.
²¹ So give their children over to famine;
   hand them over to the power of the sword.
Let their wives be made childless and widows;
   let their men be put to death,
   their young men slain by the sword in battle.
²² Let a cry be heard from their houses
   when you suddenly bring invaders against them,
for they have dug a pit to capture me
   and have hidden snares for my feet.
²³ But you, LORD, know
   all their plots to kill me.
Do not forgive their crimes
   or blot out their sins from your sight.
Let them be overthrown before you;
   deal with them in the time of your anger.

Though no word of comparison is expressed, if we read ב, beth, and not כ, caph, yet the Prophet employs a comparison, for God did not drive away the Jews by an eastern wind, but as the force of that wind is violent in Judea, the eastern wind often means a storm or a whirlwind, as though he had said, “As by a whirlwind or a storm will I cast them out.” ²⁰³²⁰³ Many copies read ב, though all the versions retain the כ; “As a burning wind will I scatter them,” is the version of the Septuagint and the Vulgate; “As a hot wind,” etc, is the Syriac. — Ed I will disperse or dissipate them, he says, before the face of the enemy. He means that enemies would come to exterminate the Jews from the land; and he adds another thing, that these enemies would be full of terror, for God would give them the force of a whirlwind or a storm to disperse and scatter the Jews, for being terrified by God they would not dare to withstand.

Then follows a commination, that God would turn to them the neck, or the back, and not the face in the day of calamity. It sometimes happens that we are severely chastised by God, he thus often tries his faithful people when he subjects them to the will of the ungodly; but yet all remedy is not taken away from them, as they find consolation in God’s mercy, for as he casts down so he raises up, as he puts to death so he gives life, according to what is said in 1 Samuel 2:6. But God here denounces a punishment without any prospect of pardon or alleviation, I will scatter them, he says, as by an east wind before their enemies. Then he adds, “In vain shall they flee to me and seek my mercy, though otherwise it is offered to all, yet then they shall implore it in vain, for it is decreed not to pardon them. I will shew to them my back, (or neck, for ערף, oreph, is the hinder part of the head, but here it means the back,) they shall then find that I am turned away from them, so that they shall not be set before my eyes.” For it is an invaluable consolation when God is pleased to look on our miseries, but he deprives the Jews of this hope, for he would turn to them his back in the day of slaughter. I cannot proceed farther now.