Jeremiah 18:11

(Verse 11) Now therefore say to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, Thus says the Lord: Behold, I am devising evil against you and devising a plan against you. Return everyone from his evil way, and amend your ways and your deeds. The Lord fulfills the parable which He had taught by both His words and His appearance, and He says: Behold, I am devising evil against you, like a potter shaping clay. But the evil mentioned by Isaiah, who says, 'Making peace and creating evil' (Isa. 45:7), is not evil in itself, but appears as evil to those who suffer it. And I am pondering a plan against you, that is, to pass judgment according to your deserts. Change your ways, and direct your paths, so that punishment may be changed to prosperity.

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.