Texts in Conversation
In Jeremiah 18, a potter reshapes flawed clay. In Romans 9, Paul uses the image to defend the potter's freedom, and in 2 Clement, the preacher alludes to it to stress that clay cannot be reshaped after firing to urge repentance before death.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Jeremiah 18:4
Hebrew Bible
1 The Lord said to Jeremiah: 2 “Go down at once to the potter’s house. I will speak to you further there.” 3 So I went down to the potter’s house and found him working at his wheel. 4 Now and then there would be something wrong with the pot he was molding from the clay with his hands. So he would rework the clay into another kind of pot as he saw fit. 5 Then the Lord’s message came to me, 6 “I, the Lord, say: ‘O nation of Israel, can I not deal with you as this potter deals with the clay? In my hands, you, O nation of Israel, are just like the clay in this potter’s hand.’
Romans 9:21
New Testament
19 You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who has ever resisted his will?” 20 But who indeed are you—a mere human being—to talk back to God? Does what is molded say to the molder, “Why have you made me like this?” 21 Has the potter no right to make from the same lump of clay one vessel for special use and another for ordinary use? 22 But what if God, willing to demonstrate his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the objects of wrath prepared for destruction? 23 And what if he is willing to make known the wealth of his glory on the objects of mercy that he has prepared beforehand for glory— 24 even us, whom he has called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?
2 Clement 8:2
Early Christian
1 While we are on earth, then, let us repent: for we are clay under the craftsman’s hand. 2 For just as a potter, if he is making a vessel and it gets twisted or crushed in his hands, reshapes it again; but if he has once put it into the fiery oven, he can no longer mend it: so also let us, while we are in this world, repent wholeheartedly of the evil things which we have done in the flesh, so that we may be saved by the Lord while we still have time for repentance. 3 For after we have left the world, we can no longer make confession there or repent any more.
Date: 130-160 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
“... The image of the potter appears in a wide range of texts, so there is no need to assume the literary dependence of ‘Clement’ upon Paul. As Lindemann observes, the author of 2 Clement and Paul each appear to use the image in a different way: ‘Clement’ is concerned with the properties of the clay, and uses the image to warn his hearers to repent while there is still time; whereas Paul is concerned with the freedom of the potter, which he employs in defence of predestination. ...”
Gregory, Andrew F.
The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers
(p. 280) Oxford University Press, 2005
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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