God’s message at the potter’s house
18
✭The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying: 2 📚“Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause you to hear my words”. 3 📚Then I went down to the potter’s house, and saw that he was doing a work on the wheel. 4 📚And the pot that he was making of clay was marred in the hand of the potter. So he remade it into another pot, as seemed good to the potter to make it.God the potter
5 Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 6 📚“O house of Israel, cannot I do with you like this potter? says the LORD. See, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. 7 📚✭At any moment I may speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck it up, and to pull it down, and to destroy it. 8 📚If that nation, against whom I have proclaimed this, turns from their evil, I will relent concerning the disaster that I thought to do to them. 9 📚And at any moment I may speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build it and to plant it. 10 📚If it does evil in my sight, not obeying my voice, then I will relent concerning the good with which I said I would bless them.
11 📚✭“Now therefore go, speak to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, ‘Thus says the LORD: See, I am preparing disaster against you, and devising a plan against you. Each one of you now turn from his evil way, and make your ways and your deeds good.’ ” 12 📚✭And they said, “There is no hope; but we will follow our own plans, and each one of us will act according to the imagination of his evil heart”.
13 📚✭Therefore thus says the LORD:
“Ask now among the nations,
who has heard such things?
The virgin of Israel has done a very
horrible thing.
14 📚✭Will the snow of Lebanon leave
the rocky fields?
Or will the cold flowing waters
that come from another place be forsaken?
15 📚Because my people have forgotten me,
they have burned incense to empty idols,
and have made themselves stumble
in their ways from the ancient paths✭,
to walk in pathways✭,
not on a way built up,
16 📚making their land desolate,
and an object of
perpetual hissing.
Everyone who passes by it will be
astonished and shake his head.
17 📚I will scatter them before the enemy
as with an east wind.
I will show them the back, and not the face,
in the day of their calamity”.
18 📚✭Then they said, “Come, and let us devise plans against Jeremiah; for the law will not perish from the priest, or counsel from the wise, or the word from the prophet. Come, and let us attack him with the tongue, and let us not pay attention to any of his words”.
19 📚✭Listen to me, O LORD, and hear
the voice of those who contend
with me.
20 📚Will evil be repaid for good?
For they have dug a pit for my soul.
Remember that I stood before you
to speak good for them,
and to turn away your wrath
from them.
21 📚Therefore deliver their children to the famine,
and pour out their blood by the power
of the sword,
and let their wives be bereaved
of their children, and become widows,
and let their men be put to death,
and let their young men be
slain by the sword in battle.
22 📚Let a cry be heard from their houses,
when you bring a troop suddenly on them.
For they have dug a pit to capture me,
and hidden snares for my feet.
23 📚Yet, LORD, you know their whole plot
against me to kill me.
Do not forgive their iniquity,
or blot out their sin from your sight,
but let them be overthrown before you.
Deal thus with them in the time
of your anger.