Jeremiah 18:11

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," 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.

Next, after the discourse concerning the two nations — the former, to which the threat is given, and the second, to which the promise is given — he says (he said, that is, to the former ones): "And now I have spoken to the men of Judah and to those who dwell in Jerusalem; thus says the Lord: Behold, I am molding evils against you." Because these things which I am molding against you are in my hand, they can fall apart. Make these things fall apart from my hand, so that the evils which I am molding against you I may change and make into good things. You would not find, "Behold, I am molding good things against you," and the things said correspondingly after them, so that after this he might make manifest that the good things which he molds he releases from his hands, that he may make them evil. But he molds evils according to the example that has been mentioned, and, molding evils, he orders them wisely (apart from the interpretation that has been given for the "it fell from my hands"), so that, if it should fall, even the end of the evils being molded may come to be of a kind I do not know.

"Let each one turn back, then, from his evil way, and make your practices better." Sometimes the more simple-minded say: blessed were the men of old, because they heard the Lord through the prophet saying, "and the Lord spoke to them." And to us now the Lord speaks through the things that are written: "Let each one turn back from his evil way"; the Lord himself converses with you, declaring, "and make your practices better." But those to whom the hortatory words concerning repentance were spoken made an answer, and let us see what they answered, so that we too may not answer in such a way. What, then, do they say in reply? "We will play the man, for we will go after our own backslidings, and each of us will do the pleasing things of his evil heart." And even if you do not say it in words, but your life is such that you sin, you too in effect say, through your evil deeds after the hortatory words, "We will play the man, for we will go after our own backslidings, and each of us will do the pleasing things of his evil heart." And what is "we will go after our own backslidings"? Those who have begun to put "their hand to the plow" and "who stretch forward to the things that are before" in their plowing, while "forgetting the things behind," have turned away from base things. Whenever, then, someone who has put "his hand to the plow" turns to the things behind, he will go "after his own backslidings"; for he will go after those things from which he turned away, and he runs back again to those sins which he had left behind. […]

): " Go, and tell them" (saith God), " Behold I frame evil against you and devise against you. Providence in all its operations is plainly working towards your ruin.

quarantine:debris (2026-07-29) — leading-punctuation+unbalanced-parens+odd-straight-quotes

Now therefore go to,....