Jeremiah 18:1

"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.

(Chapter XVIII — Verses 1-6) The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying: Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there you shall hear my words. So I went down to the potter's house, and behold, he was working on a wheel (or stones). And the vessel that he was making of clay with his hands was spoiled in his hands; so he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to him to do. Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Can I not do with you, house of Israel, as this potter does? (Vulgate: Can I not, according to the Hebrew?) The Lord says, behold, as clay in the hand of a potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. It is through all the senses that one arrives at the judgment and understanding of the mind, through hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, but it is retained more by the mind, which is seen by the eyes. Hence, the Prophet is commanded to go to the house of the potter and there to hear the commandments of the Lord. And when, he says, I had gone and descended into the house of the potter, he himself was working on the wheel, which, enticed by the ambiguity of the seventy-word, the stones were moved. For by Abanim, that is, the wheel of the potter, is meant the quality and diversity of the place and the pronunciation, and the instrument, that is, the wheel of the potter, and the stones. And when, he said, I saw a vessel being made of clay, suddenly it was dissipated, by the providence of God acting, so that the hand of the craftsman, while unaware, would shape a parable by its own mistake. And that potter, who had lost the vessel made of clay, with the wheel spinning, made another for himself as he saw fit. And immediately the Lord said to the Prophet: If the potter, he said, has the power to make again from the same clay what had been dissipated: I, in you, who as far as is possible in you, seem to have perished, will I not be able to do this?

There are two visions of Jeremiah that have just been read, one following the other. The former of these contains what concerns the clay vessel in the potter's hand, which admits of restoration after being broken (for it is possible for it to be remolded); but the other vision contains what concerns the earthen jug, which, once shattered, admits of no cure. For when it was clay, if it was broken — even if it had already been given its shape — since it was clay, it was possible for it to become a second lump and to be fashioned a second time; but when, after being clay, it has already become earthenware and has been hardened by fire, then it was not possible, after the shattering of the earthenware, for any cure to come to it. What, then, these things intend, let us first consider by way of reflection, and then, if it be granted, let us examine them according to the letter. As long as we are in this life, we are being shaped — that I may so name it, on account of our clay vessel — in a potter's fashion, and we are shaped either according to vice or according to virtue. Yet we are shaped in such a way as to admit both that our vice may be shattered, so that a new and better creature may come to be, and that our progress may be dissolved after its shaping into a clay vessel. But when, after the present age, we arrive, having come to the end of life, and then, once fired — whether by the fire of the flaming darts of the evil one we become whatever we become, or by the divine fire (since indeed "our God is a consuming fire") — if, I say, we come to be under such or such a fire, whatever we become, if we are shattered, whether we were shattered and have perished from having become good vessels, or from having become wretched vessels, we are not created anew, nor does our structure admit of improvement. For this reason, as long as we are here, being as it were in the potter's hand, even if the vessel falls from his hands, it admits of cure and of being created anew. Let this much, then, be said somewhat more readily at hand, before we examine in argument what remains, concerning the two kinds of vessels: the clay one, not yet turned to potsherd, and the second, which has already become a potsherd. But let us look, from the wording itself, at what is said about the clay vessel in the potter's hand, and how the very Word in the prophet, the Lord who prophesies in…