It is quite safe to say that Paul is too good a reasoner, and too well acquainted with the character, the word, and the economy of God as displayed in the history of his own race, to be betrayed into any such logical absurdity as this; too thoroughly humane, too mindful of his own deep doubts and questionings, too trans- parently candid to meet even a conceited and presumptuous argu- ment with a counter-argument consisting of a bare dogma and a false analogy. Paul does not admit that God made the Jew sin. He does not admit that God made the Jew incapable of believing. He does not admit that the responsibility for the Jew’s rejection lies anywhere but with himself.
Yet even the figure of the potter and the clay, properly under- stood, might have suggested to the angry Jew something beside the thought of sovereign power and will arbitrarily moulding help- less matter.
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The illustration is a common one in the Old Testament, and it is reasonable that Paul’s use of it should be colored by its usage there.
It occurs in Jeremiah xviii. 1-10. Jeremiah, in great despond- ency over the demoralization of Israel, was bidden to go down to the potter’s house. The potter shaped a vessel on the wheel, but, owing to some defect in the clay, the vessel was marred. So the potter made, of the same lump, another vessel different from that which he had at first designed. He did not throw away the clay, but his skill prevailed to triumph over the defect, and to make a vessel, perhaps inferior to the first, yet still capable of use. So God had designed Israel for a high destiny, a royal nation, a pe- culiar people ; but Israel defeated this destiny by its idolatries and rebellions. Hence God made it another and baser vessel. “The pressure of the potter’s hand was to be harder. Shame and suffering and exile—their land left desolate, and they themselves weeping by the waters of Babylon—this was the process to which they were now called on to submit.” The potter exercised his power by making the vessel unto dishonor which he originally de- signed unto honor. Side by side with the potter’s power over the clay, there goes, figuratively speaking, in the prophet’s representa- tion, the power of change and choice in the lump. “Ye are in my hand as this clay in the hand of the potter. If, when I am about to degrade the nation, they turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil. On the contrary, when I am planning for an honorable and powerful kingdom, if the people turn to evil, then I will re- pent of the good wherewith I said that I would benefit them.” Israel has a power of choice. If it is made into a vessel unto dis- honor, the fault is its own, but repentance and submission may change the issue.
Look again at Isaiah xxix. 16. This passage occurs in the pro- phecy concerning Jerusalem under the name of Ariel. The prophet predicts siege, thunder, and earthquake. He says that the Lord hath poured on the people the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed their eyes and covered their heads, so that the prophetic vision ap-
Vou. Ii.—10
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peals to them as a sealed letter to a man who can read, or as a writing to one who cannot read.
This is on the same line with the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. It is ascribed to the direct agency of God. But immediately there follows the statement of their own responsibility for their sin. The people have removed their heart from the Lord and worship Him with the lips only. Therefore, God will proceed to do marvellous and terrible works among them. O your perverseness! Think you you can hide your counsel from God? “Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter’s clay ; for shall the work say of him that made it, ‘He made me not?’ or shall the thing framed say of him that framed it, ‘He hath no understanding?’ MY In other words, why do men think that they can escape God by hid- ing their purposes from Him? Shall God (the potter) be accounted as clay (the man)? Shall man ignore the fact that he was made by God, and act as if God had no understanding? The parallel be- tween this utterance and that in Romans ix. will be evident at a glance.