Scraps on Scripture Lands.

The Potter. Jer. 18.
I HAVE been out on the shore again, examining a native manufactory of pottery, and was delighted to find the whole Biblical apparatus complete, and in full operation. There was the potter sitting at his. “frame,” and turning the “wheel” with, his foot. He had a heap of the prepared clay near him, and a pan of water by his side. Taking a lump in his hand, he placed it on the top of the wheel (which revolves horizontally), and smoothed it into a low cone like the upper end of a sugarloaf; then thrusting his thumb into the top of it, he opened a hole down through the center, and this he constantly widened, by pressing the edges of the revolving cone between his hands. As it enlarged and became thinner, he gave it whatever shape he pleased with the utmost ease and expedition. This, I suppose, is the exact point of those Biblical comparisons between the human and the divine potter: “O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in my hand, O house of Israel” (vs. 6). And the same idea is found in many other passages. When Jeremiah was watching the potter, the vessel was marred in his hand, and “so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it” (vs. 4). I had to wait a long time for that, but it happened at last. From some defect in the clay, or because he had taken too little, the potter suddenly changed his mind, crushed his growing jar instantly into a shapeless mass of mud, and, beginning anew, fashioned it into a totally different vessel (Rom. 9:2121Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor? (Romans 9:21)).
It is evident from numerous expressions in the Bible that the potter’s vessel was the synonym of utter fragility; and to say that the wicked should be broken to pieces as a potter’s vessel, was to threaten the most ruinous destruction (Jer. 19)
Arab jars are so thin and frail that they are literally “dashed to shivers” by the slightest stroke (Psalm 2.) Water-jars are often broken by merely putting them down upon the floor; and nothing is more common than for the servant to return from the fountain empty-handed, having had all his jars smashed to atoms by some irregular behavior of his donkey. —The Land and the Book.