Get up and go to the potter’s house, and there you will hear my words. Here we have a parable about a potter meant to call Israel to repentance. As the potter makes from clay any vessel he likes, so God can easily change their state of events, turning disaster into joy. If Israel does not give up its hypocrisy, the Lord will frighten them with great calamities.

Whatever is discerned by the eyes arrives to the judgment and understanding of the soul through every other sense, through hearing, smelling, tasting and touching, but is retained even more so by the mind. Thus, the prophet was commanded to go to the potter’s house and there to hear the instructions of the Lord. When, he says, I arose and went down to the potter’s house, he was making something on the wheel, which the Seventy translated with the ambiguous and misleading word stones, for abanim and organum,^[1] both meaning potter’s wheel, are sometimes called stones, depending on the region and local dialect. When, he continues, I discerned that the vessel that he was making out of clay suddenly fell apart, this occurred by the providential agency of God, that the artisan’s hand, unwittingly, would create a parable by its mistake. Then the potter who had destroyed his clay vessel on the turning wheel made of it something else, as seemed to him the thing to do. And immediately the Lord said to the prophet, If this potter has such power that he can remake something out of the same clay that disintegrated, am I not able to do the same for you who seem to have perished? Moreover, that he might signify thereby the freedom of the will, the Lord said that he would announce punishments and rewards to the nations and to this king or that king. It was not that these events that he had predicted were to happen, but rather that good may be brought out of evil if they repented, or evil brought out of good if, after their resolutions, they returned to sin. Our point here is not that God was ignorant of what the nations and kings would do, but rather that he had endowed the human person with his own will, so that he would receive either a reward or a punishment on the basis of his own merit. Yet, what happens is not entirely dependent on a person, but also the grace that God has bestowed on all, for the freedom of the will must be restrained so that the grace of the Giver would excel in all things,^[2] according to the prophecy: Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor for nothing; unless the Lord keeps the city, do the guards watch over it in vain.^[3] For it is not of the one who wills or of the one who runs, but of the God who has mercy.^[4]

The prophet Jeremiah addresses the Jews in these words: And I went down to the potter’s house. Behold, he made a work on the stones. The vessel that he made in his hands was broken. Again he made another vessel, as it pleased him to make it. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘Cannot I do to you as this potter, O house of Israel? Behold, you are like the clay of the potter in my hands.’ For I call your attention to this, that, as I said, after human transgression the great Hand was not content to leave as a trophy of victory its own work, debased by the evil one, who wickedly injured it from motives of envy, but moistened and reduced it to clay, as a potter breaks up a vessel, that by the remodeling of it all the blemishes and bruises in it may disappear, and it may be made afresh faultless and pleasing.

By his passion, therefore, Christ made perfect that human flesh that had been brought down to death by the first man’s sin and restored it by the power of his resurrection. Sitting on God’s right hand, he placed it in the highest heavens. In view of this, the apostle says, Who has raised us up together and has made us sit together in the heavenly places.^[1] It was he, you see, who was the potter mentioned by the prophet Jeremiah: The vessel that had fallen from his hand and was broken, he again raised up with his hands and formed anew, as it seemed good in his eyes. So it seemed good to him to raise the mortal and corruptible body he had assumed from the rocky tomb, and, rendering it immortal and incorruptible, to place it no longer in an earthly environment but in heaven at his Father’s right hand.

Do not despair of salvation, God is saying. Even if I condemn a nation and threaten ultimate punishment, if I see their repentance, I extend mercy instead of inflicting punishment. If I promise an abundance of blessings, but they scorn me and embrace wickedness, I shall not fulfill the promise of blessings. Knowing this, then, do not despair of better things, but apply repentance and reap salvation.

When, therefore, God speaks of an irremediable calamity, he does not say vessels of the potter, but an earthen vessel. When, for instance, he wished to teach the prophet and the Jews that he delivered up the city to an irremediable calamity, he bade him take an earthen wine vessel, and crush it before all the people and say, Thus shall this city be destroyed, be broken in pieces. But when he wishes to hold out good hopes to them, he brings the prophet to a pottery and does not show him an earthen vessel but shows him a vessel of clay, which was in the hands of the potter, falling to the ground. He brings him to saying, If this potter has taken up and remodeled his vessel that has fallen, shall I not much rather be able to restore you when you have fallen? It is possible therefore for God not only to restore those who are made of clay, through the washing of regeneration, but also to bring back again to their original state, on their careful repentance, those who have received the power of the Spirit and have fallen from grace into ruin.

What do you mean, Paul? Am I to be subject to God in the same way the clay is to the potter? Yes, Paul says.^[1] For the distance between God and man is as great as the distance between the potter and the clay. Rather the distance is not merely as great but much greater. The potter and the clay are of one and the same substance. It is just as Job said: I admit it as for those who dwell in houses of clay, because we are ourselves formed from the same clay.^[2] If a man seems more beautiful to look upon than clay, this difference was not produced by a change of nature but by the wisdom of the craftsman. Why? Because you are no different from the clay. If you refuse to believe this, let the coffins and the cremation urn convince you. And you will know that this is the truth if you have gone to visit the tombs of your ancestors. Therefore, there is no difference between the clay and the potter.

If only the sinner would have recourse to repentance as quickly as God is willing to change that fixed sentence. Listen to the Lord through the prophet promise the greatest hope to the human race: Finally I shall speak against a nation and against a kingdom, to root out and destroy them. If that nation shall turn from all of their evil deeds, I also shall repent of the evil that I thought to do to them.^[1] Behold how great is our God’s goodness to us, and learn whether he will refuse his mercy, since he longs to change his sentence if we are converted. Therefore, let us turn to him, dearly beloved, and not wish to defer the amendment of our ways until the end of our life.

You may as well accuse God of falsehood because he said by the mouth of Jonah: Yet three days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.^[1] But God will reply by the mouth of Jeremiah, At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to break down and to destroy it; if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do to them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; if it does evil in my sight, that it obeys not my voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them. Jonah, on a certain occasion, was indignant because, at God’s command, he had spoken falsely; but his sorrow was proved to be ill founded, since he would rather speak truth and have a countless multitude perish than speak falsely and have them saved.

God, who does not repent, is said to repent according to the Scripture. . . . Concerning the repentance of God, we are demanded to defend ourselves. To repent seems to be culpable and unworthy not only of God but also of the wise person. For I cannot conceive of a wise person repenting. Rather, when a person repents, supposing the customary use of the word, he repents for not having decided to be good. But God, who knows in advance what happens in the future, is unable not to have decided to be good and to repent for this. How, then, has the Scripture brought forth this phrase that says, I will repent? . . . Whenever the Scriptures speak theologically about God in relation to himself and do not involve his plan for human matters, they say that he is not as a human. . . . But whenever the divine plan involves human matters, it carries the human intellect and manners and way of speaking. If we are talking with a two-year-old child, we speak inarticulately because of the child. . . . Something of this sort also seems to me the case with God, whenever he manages the race of humankind and especially those still infants. . . . If any of us should hear those who talk to children, will he say that this old person has become senseless, this man has forgotten his beard, the age of a person? Or is it granted that out of consideration when he converses with the child he does not speak in an elderly or adult language but in a childlike language?

Since we really do repent, when he talks with us who repent God says, I repent, and when he threatens us, he does not pretend to know in advance, but he threatens as one speaking to babes. He does not pretend that he knows all things before their generation, but as one who, so to speak, plays the part of a babe, he pretends not to know the future. And he threatens the nation on account of its sins and says, If the nation repents, I will repent. O God, when you were threatening, did you not know in advance whether the nation will or will not repent? When you were promising, did you not know whether the person or the nation to whom the word is directed does not remain worthy of the promises? Yes, of course, but he pretends.

I affirm that wickedness in this context does not signify something that can be referred to the Creator’s nature, as though he were evil, but to his authority, because he is a judge. It was in view of this that he declared, It is I who create evils,^[1] and, Behold, I send evils against you. These are not evils of ill doing but evils of vengeance—and I have already cleared away the ill repute of these by showing them to be fit and proper for a judge. As then, though described as evils, they are no matter of disrepute in a judge, nor by being so described do they stigmatize the judge as evil, so also wickedness in this context must now be understood as that which, deriving from those judiciary evils, is along with them proper to a judge. . . . As then his purpose, being a just one, was not evil, he had decided on it for justice’s sake, not from wickedness. Yet the Scripture has described the punishment itself as wickedness because of the well-deserved evil of what they were to suffer.

Who would not grieve over such things and say, How is the faithful city become a harlot?^[1] How would not the Lord say to some of those who are now walking in the spirit of Jeremiah, Have you seen what the virgin of Israel has done to me? I betrothed her to me in trust, in purity, in righteousness, in judgment, in pity, and in mercy; as I promised her through Hosea the prophet.^[2] But she loved strangers, and while I, her husband, was yet alive, she is called adulteress and is not afraid to belong to another husband.

This expresses the thought both of the Jews at that time against Jeremiah, or the Lord our Savior, and of the heretics today against the Lord’s servants. They seek to spread slander and to precede holy people with an accusation, nor do they think about the truthfulness of what they say but only of the lies that they disseminate. For they boast that the law and the counsel and the speech of God remain in their priests and wise people and false prophets, even though Scripture says, Wisdom will not enter a deceptive soul.^[1]