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“Arise and go down to the poor woman’s house, and there you will hear My words” (Jer. 18:2). The parable of the potter is presented and the Jews are called to repentance. Just as a potter makes a vessel from clay, whatever he pleases, so it is not difficult for God to change the state of affairs and bring them from sorrow to joy. And if the Jews do not want to abandon their wickedness, the Lord threatens them with great defeats. “And we say: let us be strong, for we will walk according to our thoughts, and we will do every evil thing that pleases our hearts” (Jer. 18:12), that is, we are not afraid of your reproaches and will not leave the path we have walked, we will not turn away from the wickedness that is pleasing to us; we decided that as the beginning was, so would be the end. “Is food scarce and is it snow from the stones?”, that is, water flowing from the stone mountains. Jeremiah calls Hermon (the highest ridge of Anti-Lebanon) the stone of the breasts. “Will the strange, cool, flowing waters stop?” (Jer. 18:14). He calls strange and flowing waters the waters that have barely emerged from the earth, are cold, and at their source have not yet been warmed by the sun. The prophet has one goal. With both examples he wants to show the Jews their wickedness, because of which they rejected the service of God, whereas they should not have rejected that which was very important to them. They are useful, for nothing can evade its nature; and the snow on the top of the mountain does not disappear, and the flowing waters, rushing in a rapid stream, do not stop. “They will faint in their ways and in the paths of eternity” (Jer. 18:15). Jeremiah here points the Jews to the same two punishments that Moses predicted for them (Deut. 28:22, 32). The first of these punishments is such blindness of mind that at noon they will seek the light. The Jews themselves do not hide this blindness, saying in Isaiah: “We fall at noon, as at midnight” (Is. 59:10). Another punishment is resettlement to Babylon, where they will go as blind because they walked in their slow ways and, as the righteous Job says: “You have kept the ancient path; unrighteous” (Job 22:15). “And he said: Come, and let us prepare counsel against Jeremiah, for the law will not perish from a priest, nor the counsel of a wise man, nor the word of a prophet” (Jer. 18:18). Their words (the Jews) have the following meaning: it is useful for us that Jeremiah should die, for otherwise the law of the priests, the counsel of the wise, the word of the prophets will perish from his hostile prophecy, but when they say this, they mean wickedness, evil counsel and a lying word. And if Jeremiah is killed, neither the law, nor the priesthood, nor prophecy will cease. So, either because of this reason the Jews wanted to kill Jeremiah, or, what is more correct, they, under a plausible pretext, sought to hide their evil intent, inspiring the people that they were persecuting the prophet for his guilt, calling him an insidious deceiver, preaching the destruction of the priesthood, law and prophecy, daring to claim that what cannot be stopped will cease. Therefore they said: “We will strike him with our tongue” (Jer. 18:18), that is, we will make him suffer from his tongue, because with his tongue he made us suffer. “Listen, O Lord, to me and hear the voice of my justification. Is food rewarded with evil for good?” ( Jer. 18:19–20 ). Death is rewarded to the one who prayed for the deliverance of the Jews from the murderers and asked You for bounties, and preached repentance to them. “For this cause give their children a famine” (Jer. 18:21). These words should be understood in a prophetic sense, not in the sense that a prophet, like every person, by the attraction of a corrupted nature, desires revenge, but in the sense that a prophet, by revelation, either predicts a worthy judgment for the wicked, or only threatens. This is the correct meaning of other similar prophecies, which Jeremiah daily spoke to the stubborn and unyielding people. You might be interested in: