In the prophecy in the potter’s house, the house of Israel is like clay in the hand of God, the creator of history, and the fashioning of its destiny is based on its moral quality. But Israel's moral quality does not depend upon God's will because from the moment that God created the world and constricted Himself, He entrusted the choice between good and bad in the hands of man alone. If they choose to do that which is good in God's eyes, their historical destiny will be fashioned in a positive manner. But the moment that they corrupt their ways, their destiny will perforce change in accordance with their deficient moral quality. Despite the resoluteness of the prophecy itself and the decree of calamity that it contains, there is always the possibility of change, which depends exclusively on the people.
In contrast, the breaking of the bottle prophecy symbolizes the hopeless situation – the potter's vessel that cannot be made whole again. The first prophecy was delivered to the people at a stage when there was still a place for repair and renewal, while the second prophecy reflects the crisis to which the people arrived when the malleable clay hardened to the point that it turned into a bottle that could no longer be changed and that can no longer be fixed, but only broken.
