Jeremiah18chapter 18

Jeremiah 18:1-4

The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord: The word sends Jeremiah down to the potter's house to watch an ordinary craft become a living parable, the vessel he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter, so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it. Keil reads the wheel itself as the lesson, the potter's patience with flawed clay rather than merely his power over it, reworking rather than discarding what does not yet please him. Henry notes that the marred vessel becomes a different vessel, not a broken one, the same clay remade to a new pattern in the same hand.

Jeremiah 18:5-10

Then the word of the Lord came to me: Cannot I do with you as this potter? applies the picture directly to the house of Israel, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, the verse Paul later stands on at Romans 9:20-21 to argue the same right of the maker over the thing made. Calvin draws out the principle stated in verses 7 to 10 as the hinge of prophetic warning itself, a nation under sentence that turns from evil meets a God who repents of the evil he purposed, and a nation under promise that turns to evil meets the same God repenting of the good. Gill reads this conditionality as the explanation for Nineveh's survival under Jonah and for why an announced mercy can still be forfeited, the potter reworking his own plan according to the clay's own response.

Jeremiah 18:11-13

Now therefore go to, speak to the men of Judah: Behold, I frame evil against you, and devise a device against you opens with an offer, return ye now every one from his evil way, but the people close the door themselves, there is no hope, but we will walk after our own devices. Henry reads the despair as chosen rather than imposed, a people diagnosing their own case correctly and refusing the remedy anyway. Clarke reads the charge that the virgin of Israel hath done a very horrible thing, a thing not found even among the heathen, as apostasy so unnatural that Israel's own defection outstrips the nations it was meant to instruct.

Jeremiah 18:14-17

Will a man leave the snow of Lebanon: Will a man leave the snow of Lebanon, or forsake the cold flowing waters, argues from nature's constancy against Israel's inconstancy, the mountains keep their snow and the rivers keep their course while my people hath forgotten me. Barnes reads the ancient paths of verse 15 as the patriarchal way already old in Jeremiah's day, abandoned for paths not cast up, tracks that lead nowhere because no one laid them. The scattering as with an east wind before the enemy in verse 17 recalls the desert wind that withers rather than refreshes, judgment pictured as the harshest weather the land knows.

Jeremiah 18:18

Come, and let us devise devices against Jeremiah: Come, and let us devise devices against Jeremiah answers the Lord's own devising of verse 11 with a human plot against the messenger, priest, sage, and prophet closing ranks to silence the one voice still speaking for God among them. Gill reads let us smite him with the tongue as a plan for slander rather than the sword at this stage, the plotters confident that Jeremiah's own class will never all fail him at once. The verse marks the turn into the sharpest of Jeremiah's confessions, his ministry now a target rather than merely an unwelcome message.

Jeremiah 18:19-23

Give heed to me, O Lord: Give heed to me, O Lord opens the harshest of Jeremiah's recorded prayers, asking that the children of his plotters be given to famine and their wives be made widows, because they have digged a pit for my soul. Calvin reads the imprecation as an honest cry from a man appointed to intercede for these very people, verse 20 recalling that he once stood before the Lord to speak good for them, now driven to ask judgment instead. Henry sets the prayer beside the confessions around it as a plea left in God's hand rather than acted on by Jeremiah's own, an appeal to the Judge who alone knows all their counsel against him.