1. This is the word the Lord spoke to Jeremiah:
2. “Go down to the potter’s house, and I will give you my message there.”
3. So I went down to the potter’s house and saw him working at the potter’s wheel.
4. He was using his hands to make a pot from clay, but something went wrong with it. So he used that clay to make another pot the way he wanted it to be.
5. Then the Lord spoke his word to me:
6. “Family of Israel, can’t I do the same thing with you?” says the Lord. “You are in my hands like the clay in the potter’s hands.
7. There may come a time when I will speak about a nation or a kingdom that I will pull up by its roots or that I will pull down to destroy it.
8. But if the people of that nation stop doing the evil they have done, I will change my mind and not carry out my plans to bring disaster to them.
9. There may come another time when I will speak about a nation that I will build up and plant.