⁸ Be not very angry, O Lord, and do not keep our sins in mind for ever: give ear to our prayer, for we are all your people.

²⁰ Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but others of wood and earth, and some which are honoured and some without honour.

²¹ If a man makes himself clean from these, he will be a vessel for honour, made holy, ready for the master's use, ready for every good work.

²² But keep yourself from those desires of the flesh which are strong when the body is young, and go after righteousness, faith, love, peace, with those whose prayers go up to the Lord from a clean heart.

⁹ Cursed is he who has an argument with his Maker, the pot which has an argument with the Potter! Will the wet earth say to him who is working with it, What are you doing, that your work has nothing by which it may be gripped?

⁷ But we have this wealth in vessels of earth, so that it may be seen that the power comes not from us but from God;

³⁴ Give cries of grief, you keepers of sheep; give cries for help, rolling yourselves in the dust, you chiefs of the flock: for the days of your destruction have fully come, and I will send you in all directions, and your fall will be like that of the males of the flock.

²³ Smooth lips and an evil heart are like a vessel of earth plated with silver waste.

⁸ Your hands made me, and I was formed by you, but then, changing your purpose, you gave me up to destruction.

⁹ O keep in mind that you made me out of earth; and will you send me back again to dust?

¹⁰ Was I not drained out like milk, becoming hard like cheese?

¹⁶ You are turning things upside down! Is the wet earth the same to you as the one who is forming it? will the thing made say of him who made it, He made me not: or the thing formed say of him who gave it form, He has no knowledge?

²⁰ But, O man, who are you, to make answer against God? May the thing which is made say to him who made it, Why did you make me so?

²¹ Or has not the potter the right to make out of one part of his earth a vessel for honour, and out of another a vessel for shame?

²² What if God, desiring to let his wrath and his power be seen, for a long time put up with the vessels of wrath which were ready for destruction:

¹ The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying,

² Up! go down to the potter's house, and there I will let my words come to your ears.

³ Then I went down to the potter's house, and he was doing his work on the stones.

⁴ And when the vessel, which he was forming out of earth, got damaged in the hand of the potter, he made it again into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make it.

⁵ Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying,

⁶ O Israel, am I not able to do with you as this potter does? says the Lord. See, like earth in the potter's hand are you in my hands, O Israel.

⁷ Whenever I say anything about uprooting a nation or a kingdom, and smashing it and sending destruction on it;

² The valued sons of Zion, whose price was the best gold, are looked on as vessels of earth, the work of the hands of the potter!