And now, Jehovah, thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.
Isaiah 64 closes a long prayer. A broken people find nothing in themselves to plead, so they take hold of two relationships instead — Father and Potter — and rest their whole appeal there.
Where the Words Come From
Why does a ruined people pray like this at all? Commentators trace the prayer back to God's own work in them.
It is clear then that God will work morally in Israel. Outward rescue for themselves is not enough. Neither is punishment of His enemies and theirs. Such things do not serve His great purposes, His own glory, or their real good. So the Spirit will exercise them in confession and in supplication before Him.
The Ground of the Appeal
The two titles in the verse are the whole argument of the prayer. Faith reaches back to words God spoke at the start of Isaiah.
The very first words of Isaiah's prophecy were, "The Lord has spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me." Very well then, Jehovah had taken the place of Father to Israel. The faith of the prophet counted on that and based its appeal on it. What is more, Jehovah was not only Father to them but He was as a Potter also. Israel was only the clay in His hand.
A Tie God Formed and Will Not Break
Could Israel still claim God as Father after such a record? Commentators answer that the bond never rested on merit.
Israel did not deserve such a favour, that is clear. If they could ever have deserved it, they have certainly forfeited all claim to it. But it was not, and it is not, a question of deserving. The question is one of God's sovereignty; He formed the tie by His own will. He will never break it, nor will He stop owning it.
What the Potter Does with Spoiled Clay
Being clay is not only a confession of weakness — it is a hope. The same picture is worked out later in Jeremiah, where a spoiled vessel is not thrown away.
A little later, in the days of Jeremiah, God made this plain. In Jeremiah 18 we read how God told him to go down to the potter's house and learn a lesson there. He saw the clay vessel "spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do." The Lord then told Israel that they were clay in His hand. He could do with them as seemed good in His sight. Staying with Israel, we know that God will make another vessel. That is what the Lord Jesus was showing Nicodemus in John 3. That which is born of the flesh — even Abraham's flesh — is flesh. Only that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Only a born-again Israel will enter the Kingdom.
Father to the Nation
Does Father here mean what it means for a Christian? Commentators mark off Israel's standing from ours.
They were a nation taken from among the nations of the earth, brought, in a sense, near to God, and having the adoption — God a Father to them (Rom. 9:4; Isa. 64:8; Jer. 31:9). But all this still stood on the ground of a legal covenant, however different things are to be under the new covenant. That covenant brought only condemnation, and through it they could not really draw near. And if God was the Father of the nation, the people who made it up were still not, as such, His children.
Taking the Place of Clay Today
What does taking the place of clay look like today?
What one longs for, what the heart yearns after, is to be just like clay in the hands of the potter. As our hymn puts it: "You are the Potter, we the clay." God's thought is that we should be as clay, completely passive, so that the Potter may leave the mark of His own beautiful hands upon us.
The shaping is neither quick nor comfortable.
The clay is in the Potter's hand. His fingers shape it, and it comes out spoiled. The clay needs more of His patient handling and skill. It is not yet smooth and even, nor soft to His hand. He crushes it time after time. The perfect vessel stood before His mind and purpose before His hand had taken the clay and placed it on the wheel.
Summary
- Confession first. The Spirit brings the people to own their ruin before He brings them to plead — the prayer is God's own work in them.
- Father as ground. Having nothing of their own, they appeal to a relationship God announced at the very start of Isaiah's prophecy.
- Sovereign tie. The bond was never earned, so forfeited merit cannot cancel it; God formed it by His own will and will not disown it.
- Potter's answer. The Potter does not throw the spoiled clay away. He makes it again into another vessel — for Israel, a nation born again.
- Our place. The same words become a believer's prayer: lie passive in His hands, through the crushing, until the Potter is seen in the vessel.