““The potential difficulty posed by Jeremiah 18:7–10 arises, I suggest, for two reasons. On the one hand, the text is making a point about divine responsiveness in a way that, characteristic of Hebrew idiom, is generalizing—and a generalization may permit exceptions and qualifications. It is only if the generalization is read as a universal claim that a problem arises. On the other hand, the Hebrew language is notoriously short of modal forms in its verbs: may, might, should, would, and so forth. One always has to infer the correct nuance from the context (and the context may not always enable one to be precise).35 It would not be strained to render the verb depicting God’s response in 18:8, 10 as “I may relent/retract.””
