At the Potter’s House

The wheel is spinning. Wet clay rises between a potter’s fingers, round and smooth. And then, all at once, the pot wobbles, sags and falls in on itself. What will the potter do now?

Jeremiah has been a prophet in Jerusalem for years. Again and again he has warned the people of Judah to turn away from idols and back to the Lord. Again and again they have not listened. Then one day God gives him an unusual instruction. No vision this time. No message to shout in the temple courts. Just this. “Get up and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” So Jeremiah goes.

The workshop smells of damp earth and smoke. Shelves hold rows of drying jars and bowls, and somewhere nearby a kiln is hot. The potter sits at his wheel, working the clay with his hands. Jeremiah watches. And as he watches, the pot the potter is making is spoiled in his hands. Maybe there is a lump in the clay, or a wall that has grown too thin. But the potter does not throw the clay away. He presses it back down into a lump, wets it, and starts again. He shapes it into another pot, as seems best to him.

Then the word of the Lord comes to Jeremiah. “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? Look. Like clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand.” The people of Judah had been acting as if they were in charge of their own shape. As if they could make themselves into whatever they liked. But they were clay, and God was the potter.

And then God says something surprising. If at any time I announce that a nation will be pulled up and torn down, and that nation turns from its evil, then I will relent, and not bring the disaster I had planned. And if I announce that I will build up and plant a nation, but it does evil and will not listen to me, then I will relent of the good I had planned for it. In other words, this clay can answer back. How a nation responds to God really matters.

So God gives Jeremiah a message for the people of Judah and Jerusalem. “Look, I am shaping disaster against you, and making a plan against you. Turn back now, every one of you, from your evil ways. Make your ways and your actions good.” It is a warning. But it is also an open door. The clay is still on the wheel. It is not too late.

And their answer is heartbreaking. “It’s no use. We will follow our own plans. Each of us will do whatever our stubborn, evil heart wants.” God had held out the offer of being reshaped. They chose to stay as they were.

In the Hebrew text, the potter is working at “the two stones”. Many scholars take this to mean a wheel made of two stone discs joined by an upright shaft. The potter spun the lower disc with his feet, and that turned the upper one, where the clay sat. An ancient Jewish book written a few centuries later, Ecclesiasticus, also called Sirach, pictures the same scene: the potter sitting at his work, turning the wheel with his feet, his whole mind on finishing his pots.

The potter’s house is in Jeremiah chapter eighteen, verses one to twelve. The people said, it’s no use. But a potter at the wheel tells a different story. Spoiled clay can be shaped again, if it stays in the potter’s hands. So here is something to think about. Is there a part of your life where you have said, it’s no use, and what would it mean to let God reshape it?