Isaiah 30:12-14

¹² For this reason, the holy one of Israel says this: “Because you sit there rejecting this word and you trust in oppression and wrongdoing and you rely on it, ¹³ for this reason, injustice will come for you like a breach about to fall, bulging out on a high wall whose breaking comes suddenly, just like that. ¹⁴ And he breaks it like a container which its creator breaks, it is crushed; he has no compassion, and nothing usable found among its fragments for the taking away of fire from a fireplace, or for the collecting of water from a well.”

smashed

Isaiah had just given his readers the potter and clay analogy,[1] and he continues to stress the dark side of that metaphor. We are used to hearing the positive side of the metaphor – the fact that we are God’s workmanship. But, here, because we are the creation of a divine creator, Isaiah says he has the right to smash us if we are not serving his purpose. Isaiah inserts this encouraging bit of advice after he had revealed that his listeners are rejecting his words because that are not comfortable with them. They had cried foul when Isaiah dared suggest that their God would judge them instead of the nations around them. Surely, they thought, God would not do that to his own people. But the LORD is not just a God of love, he is also a God of holiness. If his creation does not measure up to his holiness, he is free to smash it and start over.

[1] 29:16.