This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: "Go down to the potter's house, and there I will give you my message. So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him...."
This famous passage has its fullest meaning from Genesis� the cosmogony � where Elohim (the God who creates) forms adam (the individual man and the entire kind of humanity) from �red clay�.
The Hebrew-Aramaic word here (clay) is as many Hebrew words - and inflective entandra and there is a word play going on here.
The word we translate as �clay� also means �red� depending upon the usage and context.
In Genesis, the �clay� is derived from the word �earth� or as we would say �the ground� as used to express land or field. They are derived from the same root.
God created the �heavens and earth�. Earth / ground / dirt / soil / field / but especially in the sense of that which hhas organic life and senses.
The composition of clay is earth and water.
Water here comes from the same word as �heavens� and is connected to the dove flying just above the surface of the waters (from out of which all things come into being) and his shadow is on the surface of the waters. Which presents a wonderful picture of a gull like bird flying swiftly just a few feet from the surface of the waters and the sun casting its shadow on the surface just a few feet before him.
The waters rising and sepereated from the waters sinking. The waters above - the waters below. The waters which risie from the earth in evaporation to become the clouds of heave - and the waters which rain from the heavens and sink into the earth to give life to the earth's organic nature.
So here the earth represents our physical nature and the water represents our spiritual (psychological) nature.
Man - is a composition of mind and body. However the mind shapes the body and the body does not shape the mind - unless we let it and want it that way.
The potter - is God - as Providence. His hands are the daily events which happen to our composite nature of mind and body. Through the events of daily life (the experiences that happen to us) God forms our personalities (in concert with our free decisions).
Let us make man in our image - refers to all these events that happen to us as messengers of the one creating God.
Israel (in the cosmogony) represents all men who seek God. It also represent the Hebrew nation singled out from all others. It also represents us who are the spiritual Israel because we seek God.
Israel - struggles with God. A man who does not seek God does not struggle with God. The man who does not seek God has no notion that it is God behind all events which happen to himself and to the world. A man who seeks God struggles often - to understand - the why of God (even if he may not understand).
Within the history of Israel the nation - they expected life to be smooth and God to pave the way to happiness� and we often uses God as a type of tool �God - please do this for me - and do that for me etc..�
But in God�s mind he knows what the vase (what the potter is forming) should look like - and the clay does not know the shape that it should be (but it thinks it does know the shape).
So it is the potter�s right - when the shape of the vase is not turning out how the potter wants it to be - to take his hands and crush the clay back to a state in which he can reform it.
So this is what God was telling Jeremiah (just before the exile in Babylon) �
�Israel the nation - has not taken the shape I was trying to make it into - therefore - I will crush it. I will collapse it - and being again.�
This of course also applies to our own lives. We have an image in our minds of what a saint should be - and what we should be like as a holy person. Yet - we do not know the shape god has in mind (we do not know what we shall be like except that we shall be like him).
Neither do we give God much credit for being totally in charge of his creation. We often take the view of Greek myth (thanks to the early Greek fathers who brought that view into the church) where life is seen as a combat between forces of Good and forces of Evil. A war of the gods! A view which became so predominant among the early Greek fathers - that it had to be condemned - by Council. Settled - once and for all.
�look in the city streets - is it not I who create evil as well as good?� God informs the prophet.
This small narration of the potter and his clay is bound tightly to the narration of Job - where all his friends give several reasons why evil things are happening to Job - but Job tells them all to be quite because he is not the pawn of a battle between good and evil - but God himself (the good) has brought all this down upon Job - and there is no way for Job to fight God himself.
We assume that if we confess our sins and keep our self from further sin - all should be smooth for us� so we do not understand when bad things happen to good people.
However - God takes the view that we begin as a lump of unformed clay - and through the hammer of life�s experiences - he will for our personality (the entire person) into a shape which he alone knows what it is and what it shall be. So while the clay (our emotions) and the water (our physiological min) can have an imagine of what shape it things holiness will take - the reality is that neither the clay (our emotions) nor the water (our mind) have the capacity to know the real shape that God has in his mind. We can not know it until it is accomplished and done.
Until then - we feel the slap of God�s hand on the clay - we feel the force as he shape this part and now that part - and we feel the gentile fingers move delicately now this part and now that part. Force - and compassion. Now delicate love - and now forceful movement.
As the new man (the new adam, the new Israel) is formed out of the old.
Just when we think the ride is over - the hands begin again. Yet another step to be taken on the laddar.
-ray
