Lexicon :: Strong's G4081 - pēlos

They said to each other, “Come, let’s make oven-fired bricks.” (They used brick for stone and asphalt for mortar.)

and made their lives bitter with difficult labor in brick and mortar and in all kinds of fieldwork. They ruthlessly imposed all this work on them.

I pulverize them like dust of the earth;

I crush them and trample them like mud in the streets.

how much more those who dwell in clay houses,

whose foundation is in the dust,

who are crushed like a moth!

“Please remember that you formed me like clay.

Will you now return me to dust?

Though he piles up silver like dust

and heaps up fine clothing like clay —

He throws me into the mud,

and I have become like dust and ashes.

I am just like you before God;

I was also pinched off from a piece of clay.

The earth is changed as clay is by a seal;

its hills stand out like the folds of a garment.

His undersides are jagged potsherds,

spreading the mud like a threshing sledge.

I pulverize them like dust before the wind;

I trample them[fn] like mud in the streets.

He brought me up from a desolate[fn] pit,

out of the muddy clay,

and set my feet on a rock,

making my steps secure.

Rescue me from the miry mud; don’t let me sink.

Let me be rescued from those who hate me

and from the deep water.

“I will make her a swampland and a region for herons,[fn] and I will sweep her away with the broom of destruction.”

This is the declaration of the LORD of Armies.

You have turned things around,

as if the potter were the same as the clay.

How can what is made say about its maker,

“He didn’t make me”?

How can what is formed

say about the one who formed it,

“He doesn’t understand what he’s doing”?

“I have stirred up one from the north, and he has come,

one from the east who invokes my[fn] name.

He will march over rulers as if they were mud,

like a potter who treads the clay.

“Woe to the one who argues with his Maker —

one clay pot among many.[fn]

Does clay say to the one forming it,

‘What are you making? ’

Or does your work say,

‘He has no hands’?[fn]

Yet LORD, you are our Father;

we are the clay, and you are our potter;

we all are the work of your hands.

“House of Israel, can I not treat you as this potter treats his clay? ” ​— ​this is the LORD’s declaration. “Just like clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, house of Israel.

Then my enemy will see,

and she will be covered with shame,

the one who said to me,

“Where is the LORD your God? ”

My eyes will look at her in triumph;

at that time she will be trampled

like mud in the streets.

Draw water for the siege;

strengthen your fortresses.

Step into the clay and tread the mortar;

take hold of the brick-mold!

Tyre has built herself a fortress;

she has heaped up silver like dust

and gold like the dirt of the streets.

They will be like warriors in battle

trampling down the mud of the streets.

They will fight because the LORD is with them,

and they will put horsemen to shame.