Woe unto him that says unto his father, What do you beget? or to the woman, What have you brought forth?
All Commentaries on Isaiah 45:10 Go To Isaiah 45
Cyril of Alexandria
AD 444
Conversely, the grace that descended on these was rejected and not accepted by the Jewish people. For they resisted, as I have said, the teachings of Christ.… But “I desire to refashion you,” Christ is saying, “into something better, to remodel you into something finer through a spiritual birth (meaning, of course, through water and the Spirit). But you resisted my plans without understanding.” Therefore, the prophet says, does the clay reproach the potter for not having an artisan’s hand or for not knowing how to shape what was in his hands? Or does someone who is about to be begotten put the question to his own father, “Why are you begetting?” How do you, then, who are like clay in the potter’s hands and have not knowledge at all of how your spiritual rebirth will take place, have the audacity to enter into argument? And why do you not rather understand that you should cede to the artisan and father the knowledge of how to do these things? … It is therefore necessary to give way to what God says. He himself knows the way of his own works, and what he has fashioned is not to be curiously inquired into. It belongs to someone like ourselves to honor what transcends the human mind with an unquestioning faith.
You should also know that the prophet Jeremiah was sent to the house of the potter to watch him at work. When the pot turned out badly and the potter refashioned the clay into a new vessel, God said to him, “Can I not do with you as this potter has done, O house of Israel? Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand.” That we are transformed spiritually and brought to a holy and utterly good life is explained by Paul when he says, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” Through him we are also reborn, for we no longer contain a corruptible seed but that which is sown by the word of the living God who endures forever.
