Background and Notes on Jeremiah 18:1-6

BACKGROUND: Here I will primarily be summarizing the content of chapters 2 and 7 for these contain major themes (not the only ones) which recur throughout much of the book.

God’s people in Jeremiah’s day were under the delusion that God would defend them no matter what. With intense irony the Book of Jeremiah opens with God’s threats against the people, indicating that punishment was indeed coming (Jer 1:11-16), and is followed by the promise that He would protect Jeremiah as he delivered this news to them (Jer 1:17-19).

Just as God has it in his power to protect His people in their devotion to him (Jer 2:3), so too He has it in His power to bring punishment upon them for their infidelity and loss of devotion (Jer 2:4-13). It is their sin of forsaking their Lord that has corrupted them and brought trouble upon them (Jer 2:14-17). Human powers cannot save them (Jer 2:18-19). Neither can they cleanse themselves from their wickedness (Jer 2:20-21), and still less can they deny its existence (Jer 2:23-24). They have become helplessly in need of their idols (Jer 2:25-26), yet when these cannot help them in time of trouble, they call to the Lord (Jer 2:27), but He will leave them to their false gods (Jer 2:28). How dare they still plead with Him! (Jer 2:28).

God has not been useless to His people, yet they have moved on; they have forgotten their God (Jer 2:30-32). Steeped in the blood of those they have murdered the pick their way among their lover gods, still pleading their innocence and thinking that God’s anger is turned from them; but they are deluded (Jer 2:33-35). The human powers they have relied upon will come to naught, having been rejected by God, and the people will go into exile (Jer 2:36-37).

The people have taken to presuming upon the Lord’s presence in the Temple as a safeguard against his punishing them for their sins of oppression and idolatry (Jer 7:1-10). But judgement will come upon the Temple (Jer 7:11-14). The people will be cast away (Jer 7:15). The Temple, the city will bear the wrath of God because of the people’s presumptions, idolatries, child sacrifices, disobedience and rejection of prophecy, ( (Jer 7:16-34).

NOTES: Read Jeremiah 18:1-6.

Jer 18:1 is stock prophetic phrasing employed to introduce prophetic words or actions. What follows in Jer 18:2-3 is a brief command and compliance narrative. The prophet does as he is told and this provides the Lord with an opportunity to instruct the prophet concerning His power, using as his starting point a lesson from a humble, commonplace image: that of a potter working with clay.

Jeremiah observes that when the object the potter is fashioning from a lump of clay turns out badly, he simply begins to refashion the lump into another object as seems right to his professional potter’s eye and judgment (Jer 18:4).

The words in Jeremiah 18:5 recall the stock prophetic phrasing of Jer 18:1 which opened the passage and indicates that the point of the command to Jeremiah, along with the observation he made as a result, have come to fruition, i.e., the teaching which follows beginning in Jer 18:5. The Lord can do to Israel as he sees fit, just as the potter can with his lump of clay (Jer 18:6).