This passage presents God in the image of an autocratic, totalitarian, emperor. God exercises divine punishment on those who do evil, and reward for those who follow his (sic) commands.
However, there is another way to hear this text. The text reveals that evil is antithetical to God's nature and character. Not only is there no evil in God's personal being, God abhors evil in anyone's being. And particularly, God abhors evil inflicted on others.
The text also reveals that God is influenced by unfolding events, by the decisions and
actions of people.
if that nation turns from evil ... I will change my mind
Thirdly, we see that God is actively present in the history of nations (and individuals) seeking to destroy evil on the one hand, and building up God's way on the other. And though the building up happens through the cooperation of people ("listening to my voice"), God is also actively, directly and independently involved. Things are happening because God is causing them.
Where the text fails, in my humble opinion, is in how it imagines God's activity in history. Reality is relational. And so God acts in and through relations. But like all relations, all the parties have a certain amount of freedom. And in some ways, God has less freedom than others, because unlike us, God is not free to act against God's own character (love); and unlike us, God is not free to use coercion (because force violates the character of love which must always be voluntary).
So the text's image of God plucking up, breaking down, and destroying is not helpful. And yet the image of the potter and the clay is helpful if we remember that clay is not passive. Clay has qualities and characteristics that vary from day to day and batch to batch. A potter can NOT do whatever she wishes with the clay. The molding actions of the potter must be in deeply felt, sympathetic response to the properties of the clay. As the text notes, sometimes this relationship fails.
There is evil in this relational world of ours because the "clay" is always free to not follow God's voice. However, built into the fabric of reality is the lure of God's love. This lure is not coercive, but it does not nurture all options. And so the option for evil has its own self-destruction built in. The tearing down of evil that the texts refers to does not happen because God comes down from heaven and alters earthly history. Evil destroys itself as a natural consequence of the way reality is built.
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