(11) I frame evil.--The verb chosen is that which specially describes the potter's work, and from which the Hebrew word for potter is itself derived. This, so to speak, is the shape of the vessel actually in hand, determining its use, but its form is not unalterably fixed. It is shown in terrorem, and the people are invited to accept the warning by repentance.

18:11-17 Sinners call it liberty to live at large; whereas for a man to be a slave to his lusts, is the very worst slavery. They forsook God for idols. When men are parched with heat, and meet with cooling, refreshing streams, they use them. In these things men will not leave a certainty for an uncertainty; but Israel left the ancient paths appointed by the Divine law. They walked not in the highway, in which they might travel safely, but in a way in which they must stumble: such was the way of idolatry, and such is the way of iniquity. This made their land desolate, and themselves miserable. Calamities may be borne, if God smile upon us when under them; but if he is displeased, and refuses his help, we are undone. Multitudes forget the Lord and his Christ, and wander from the ancient paths, to walk in ways of their own devising. But what will they do in the day of judgment!Now therefore go to,.... This is the application of the above general rules of procedure to the people of the Jews, and particularly that which relates to the destruction of a nation or kingdom, and the declaration of it in order to reclaim them:

speak to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem,

saying, thus saith the Lord; or, "to the man of Judah" (u); the body of the Jewish nation, and especially the inhabitants of the metropolis of it; which was the source of sin to the whole kingdom, and on which the calamity threatened would chiefly come, if not prevented by a reformation:

behold, I frame evil against you; as the potter frames his clay upon the wheel, to which the allusion is; which is to be understood of the evil of punishment, but not of any secret purpose, and settled determination, in the mind of God to bring it upon them; for that is never disannulled by himself or others, or ever changed; but some operation in Providence, which began to work towards their destruction; some providential step which God had taken, and which threatened their ruin:

and devise a device against you; the same as before; by which it looked as if he had thought of the matter, and had contrived a scheme, which if he went on with, would issue in the subversion of their whole state:

return you everyone from his evil way; that so the reformation may be as general as the corruption was: it supposes a sense of the evil of their former conduct, and repentance for their sins, of which their forsaking and abstaining from them would be an evidence:

and make your ways and your doings good; for it is not sufficient barely to abstain from sin, which is only a negative holiness; but there must be a performance of good works, a walking in them, a constant series and course of obedience to God, according to the rule of his word.

(u) "ad virum Jehudah", Montanus, Cocceius, Schmidt.