| Comment | I believe it's a play on words using two biblical references to 'clay.' One sense is as a poetic or literary word for 'earth': Adam, for instance, was created out of clay (IIRC). Less obviously, there also seems to be an allusion to the image of God as the potter and humans as God's material, the clay that God has to work with, in the sense of a malleable substance.
So we as humans are what God uses to create and change the world; but that instrument, that material, is humble, lowly, like potter's clay. Yet at death, our bodies become part of the earth, which is an even lower, more inferior (= 'meaner') material, and that material is part of us when we die and (in traditional belief) rise at the last day (the Last Judgment).
xy's translation looks mostly very nice, but the presence or absence of a comma at the end of the first line makes a big difference in the meaning. I have read it as given, without a second comma:
God’s humbler instrument, though meaner clay
should share the glory of that glorious day.
Gottes bescheidenes Instrument, obwohl gemeinerer Lehm
an der Herrlichkeit jenes herrlichen Tages teilhaben sollte.
But without a comma it would be
God’s humbler instrument, though meaner clay,
should share the glory of that glorious day.
Gottes bescheidenes Instrument, wenn auch gemeinerer Lehm,
sollte an der Herrlichkeit jenes herrlichen Tages teilhaben.
I don't think 'should' can be 'soll' here, only 'sollte,' which is partly why the first reading, without the second comma, makes more sense to me.
Since it's two lines of verse, it's possible that it may be a quotation from a known poem, hymn, etc.; if this is for something serious, you should probably research that.
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