Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no hands?
Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! - anticipating the objections which the Jews might raise as to why God permitted their captivity, and when He did restore them, why He did so by a foreign prince, Cyrus, not a Jew (Isaiah 40:27, etc.), but mainly and ultimately the objections about to be raised by the Jews against God's sovereign act in adopting the whole Gentile world as His spiritual Israel (Isaiah 45:8, referring to this catholic diffusion of the Gospel), as if it were an infringement of their nation's privileges. So Paul expressly quotes it, Romans 9:4-8; Romans 9:11-21.
(Let) the potsherd (strive) with the potsherds of the earth. "Let ... strive' is not in the Hebrew. The words may be in apposition with "him." 'A potsherd among the potsherds of the earth.' So the Vulgate, Syriac, and apparently the Arabic. A creature fragile and worthless as the fragment of an earthen vessel, among others equally so, and yet presuming to strive with his Maker! (Gesenius.) But it favours the English version that the Hebrew 'eth (H853), being translated with in the first clause, should naturally be so in the second clause. Of course the English version does not enjoin strife with one's fellow-men (2 Timothy 2:24); but implies simply that whatever good one might promise himself from striving with his fellow-creature of the earth, to strive with one's Maker is suicidal madness on the face of it (Isaiah 27:4).
Shall the clay say ... or thy work, He hath no hands? - or 'Shall thy work say of thee, He hath no hands?'