Before Sennacherib, that new and still more powerful king, the policy of Judah fluctuated between restless schemes for alliances, especially with Egypt, and the firm independence of all but the power of God which Isaias taught, and which ultimately prevailed. It was then that he saw with clarity the mystery of creation, and was enabled to vest with reality in his mind that which faith, without sight, imposes. He expresses it under the humble image of a potter making pots as he will; the analogy becomes a permanent tradition in the Scriptures. It has a triple significance. It shows the emergence into the certitudes of the reason of the fact of substance, the independence of one's existence of any but the divine Being. Substance is the immediate term of creation, upon which all else in the creature as being accident depends mediately.