TO FORM, shape, fashion — the potter's verb. It is the word for God forming the man from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7), and it opens Jeremiah's call: 'before I FORMED you in the belly I knew you' (1:5). Jeremiah later turns it into a whole sign-act at the potter's house, where the clay marred in the potter's hand is reshaped (ch 18) — the nation as clay under a hand that can make and unmake. The related noun yetser is the 'inclination' formed in the human heart. ⚠ And the sign-act has a sting the English can hide: after the workman has been called ha-YOTSER, 'the potter', four times (18:2, 3, 4, 6), God uses the same root of himself as a participle with a new object — 'look, I am FORMING evil against you' (18:11). The potter is still at the wheel; what is on the wheel now is this. KJV catches it with a craftsman's word: 'I FRAME evil against you.' → first discussed at Jer 1:5