(Note: This monologue is from the point of view of an imagined contemporary of Jeremiah.)

I was down at the potter’s house yesterday. Have you been recently? I haven’t see you there. In fact, I haven’t see many people there at all recently. Nobody much comes to the potter’s house these days. It’s certainly not how it used to be when the potter’s house was a gathering point for the community. Well, you know how people would come just to watch the potter work with the clay. We would just stand there and marvel at the ways he could shape it and fashion it and mold it. The potter had complete control of the clay. He can do anything with it. We’d go just to watch an artist at work, to see what he would do next, to applaud the final products.

Those were good days, weren’t they? Gathering at the po…