13. Why is it ridiculous for humans to challenge Jehovah’s purposes?

¹³ After this description of future joyful blessings, the tone of the prophecy changes abruptly, and Isaiah pronounces a double woe: “Woe to the one that has contended with his Former, as an earthenware fragment with the other earthenware fragments of the ground! Should the clay say to its former: ‘What do you make?’ And your achievement say: ‘He has no hands’?

Isaiah 45:9,

Apparently, the sons of Israel object to what Jehovah foretells. Perhaps they do not believe that Jehovah will allow his people to go into exile. Or maybe they find fault with the idea that Israel will be liberated by a king of a heathen nation instead of a king of David’s house. To portray the absurdity of such objections, Isaiah compares objectors to discarded lumps of clay and scraps of pottery that would dare to question the wisdom of their maker. The very thing the potter has formed is now stating that the potter has no hands or power to form. How foolish!