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13. A Linen Belt and Wineskins

¹ This is what the LORD said to me: “Go and buy a linen belt and put it around your waist, but do not let it touch water.” ² So I bought a belt, as the LORD directed, and put it around my waist.

³ Then the word of the LORD came to me a second time: ⁴ “Take the belt you bought and are wearing around your waist, and go now to Perath Or possibly to the Euphrates; similarly in verses 5-7 and hide it there in a crevice in the rocks.” ⁵ So I went and hid it at Perath, as the LORD told me.

⁶ Many days later the LORD said to me, “Go now to Perath and get the belt I told you to hide there.” ⁷ So I went to Perath and dug up the belt and took it from the place where I had hidden it, but now it was ruined and completely useless.

⁸ Then the word of the LORD came to me: ⁹ “This is what the LORD says: ‘In the same way I will ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. ¹⁰ These wicked people, who refuse to listen to my words, who follow the stubbornness of their hearts and go after other gods to serve and worship them, will be like this belt—completely useless! ¹¹ For as a belt is bound around the waist, so I bound all the people of Israel and all the people of Judah to me,’ declares the LORD, ‘to be my people for my renown and praise and honor. But they have not listened.’

Wineskins

¹² “Say to them: ‘This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: Every wineskin should be filled with wine.’ And if they say to you, ‘Don’t we know that every wineskin should be filled with wine?’ ¹³ then tell them, ‘This is what the LORD says: I am going to fill with drunkenness all who live in this land, including the kings who sit on David’s throne, the priests, the prophets and all those living in Jerusalem. ¹⁴ I will smash them one against the other, parents and children alike, declares the LORD. I will allow no pity or mercy or compassion to keep me from destroying them.’”

Threat of Captivity

    ¹⁵ Hear and pay attention,
   do not be arrogant,
   for the LORD has spoken.
¹⁶ Give glory to the LORD your God
   before he brings the darkness,
before your feet stumble
   on the darkening hills.
You hope for light,
   but he will turn it to utter darkness
   and change it to deep gloom.
¹⁷ If you do not listen,
   I will weep in secret
   because of your pride;
my eyes will weep bitterly,
   overflowing with tears,
   because the LORD’s flock will be taken captive.

    ¹⁸ Say to the king and to the queen mother,
   “Come down from your thrones,
for your glorious crowns
   will fall from your heads.”
¹⁹ The cities in the Negev will be shut up,
   and there will be no one to open them.
All Judah will be carried into exile,
   carried completely away.

    ²⁰ Look up and see
   those who are coming from the north.
Where is the flock that was entrusted to you,
   the sheep of which you boasted?
²¹ What will you say when the LORD sets over you
   those you cultivated as your special allies?
Will not pain grip you
   like that of a woman in labor?
²² And if you ask yourself,
   “Why has this happened to me?”—
it is because of your many sins
   that your skirts have been torn off
   and your body mistreated.
²³ Can an Ethiopian Hebrew Cushite (probably a person from the upper Nile region) change his skin
   or a leopard its spots?
Neither can you do good
   who are accustomed to doing evil.

    ²⁴ “I will scatter you like chaff
   driven by the desert wind.
²⁵ This is your lot,
   the portion I have decreed for you,” declares the LORD,
“because you have forgotten me
   and trusted in false gods.
²⁶ I will pull up your skirts over your face
   that your shame may be seen—
²⁷ your adulteries and lustful neighings,
   your shameless prostitution!
I have seen your detestable acts
   on the hills and in the fields.
Woe to you, Jerusalem!
   How long will you be unclean?”

He continues the same subject, — that God did not deal with his people with so much severity without the most just cause; for it could not be expected that he should treat them with more gentleness, since they rejected him and had recourse to vain confidences. I also, he says; for the particle גם, gam, denotes something mutual, as though he had said, “I also will have my turn; for I have it in my power to avenge myself: I will retaliate,” he seems to say, “this thine ingratitude; for as thou hast despised me, so will I expose thee to reproach and shame.” For God was shamefully despised by the Jews, when they substituted the Egyptians and their idols in his place: they could not have done him more dishonor than by transferring his glory to the ungodly and to their own figments. We hence see that there is an emphasis in the particle also, I will also make bare, or discover, thy skirts on thy face; that is, I will cast thy skirts on thy face. ¹⁰⁰¹⁰⁰     This is no doubt the meaning. See Nahum 3:5. The verb means to strip off, so as to make bare. The threatening is, to strip off the skirts and throw them over the face; and this is the rendering of the Syriac. Probably the most literal rendering would be the following, —
   And I also will strip (or roll) up thy skirts over thy face.
   The versions all differ, but the Septuagint convey this idea. Blayney’s uncovering “thy skirts before thee,” imparts no meaning. — Ed.

This mode of speaking often occurs in the Prophets; and as I have elsewhere explained, it means the uncovering of the uncomely parts: it is as though a vile woman was condemned to bear the disgrace of being stripped of her garments and exposed to the public, that all might abhor a spectacle so base and disgraceful. God, as we have before seen, assumed the character of a husband to his people: as then he had been so shamefully despised, he now says, that he had in readiness the punishment of casting the skirts of his people over their faces, that their reproach or baseness might appear by exposing their uncomely parts. It then follows —