“Woe to those who quarrel with their Maker,
    those who are nothing but potsherds
    among the potsherds on the ground.
Does the clay say to the potter,
    ‘What are you making?’
Does your work say,
    ‘The potter has no hands’?
10 Woe to the one who says to a father,
    ‘What have you begotten?’
or to a mother,
    ‘What have you brought to birth?’

11 “This is what the Lord says—
    the Holy One of Israel, and its Maker:
Concerning things to come,
    do you question me about my children,
    or give me orders about the work of my hands?
12 It is I who made the earth
    and created mankind on it.
My own hands stretched out the heavens;
    I marshalled their starry hosts.
13 I will raise up Cyrus in my righteousness:
    I will make all his ways straight.
He will rebuild my city
    and set my exiles free,
but not for a price or reward,
    says the Lord Almighty.”

There is a time and place when we might want to reverently ask questions of God. We don’t understand what He is doing, and we recognise He doesn’t have to give us any further insight, and may well choose not to. But we ask, in a spirit of submission and humility, recognising that ‘God is God, and I am not.’ We freely acknowledge His sovereignty and his absolute right to do as He pleases.

That is one thing.

But to quarrel with Him is quite another.

‘They cannot see past the fact that Cyrus is a pagan, and because God’s chosen way of working does not fit their own notions of what is proper they cannot rejoice in it. They are trapped in small-mindedness, like the Pharisees of later times…We are reminded of the elder brother in Jesus’ famous parable (he ‘became angry and refused to go in)…Theological impertinence is the blight of religion in ever age, and God is rightly angered by it. But he is not deterred by it. He stoutly defends his sovereign freedom as Creator to use anyone he pleases, and the rightness of his choice of Cyrus (11-13). But how sad that he has to press on with his good plans for his people in the face of their complaints instead of to the joyful strains of their praise!’ Barry Webb: ‘Isaiah’, pp.184,185.

Verses 11-13 read in ‘The Message:

Thus God, The Holy of Israel, Israel’s Maker, says:
    “Do you question who or what I’m making?
    Are you telling me what I can or cannot do?
I made earth,
    and I created man and woman to live on it.
I handcrafted the skies
    and direct all the constellations in their turnings.
And now I’ve got Cyrus on the move.
    I’ve rolled out the red carpet before him.
He will build my city.
    He will bring home my exiles.
I didn’t hire him to do this. I told him.
    I, God-of-the-Angel-Armies.”