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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?”

I have said that there is here a new prophecy; for the Prophet is said to buy for himself a girdle or a belt, or, according to some, a truss or breeches; and as mention is made of linen, this opinion may be probable; but אזור, asur, means not only the breeches which they then wore, but also a girdle or belt, according to what Isaiah says, when, speaking figuratively of Christ’s kingdom, that faithfulness would be the girdle of his loins. (Isaiah 11:5) It, may here, however, be taken for breeches as well as for a girdle. ⁷⁰⁷⁰ It is rendered “περίζωμα — a girdle,” by the Septuagint; — “lumbare — a garment for the loins,” by the Vulgate; — “sudarium — a napkin,” by the Syriac; — “cingulum — a girdle,” by the Targum and Arabic. The Hebrew word never means anything but a girdle or belt, as the verb signifies to surround, to bind.
Calvin makes no remark on the command, not to put it in water before he wore it. Various has been the explanation. The view the Rabbins give is inconsistent with the passage, — that it was to be left dirty after wearing, that it might rot the sooner; for the Prophet is bidden, when commanded to wear it, not to wash it. Grotius and others think that he was to wear it as made, in its rough state, in order to shew the rude condition of the Jews when God adopted them. Venema is of the opinion that in order to shew that is was newly made, and had not been worn by another, nor polluted. Gataker says that the purpose was to shew that nothing was to be done by the Prophet to cause the girdle to rot, as wet might have done so, in order to prove that the rottenness proceeded only from the Jews themselves. Lowth regards it as intended to teach the Jews their corrupt state by nature, so that it was through favor or grace only that God adopted them; and he refers to Ezekiel 16:4. The last, which is nearly the same with the view of Grotius, seems the most suitable. — Ed.

As to the matter in hand, it makes no great difference. The Prophet then is bidden to buy for himself a linen girdle or a linen breeches, and he is also bidden to go to Euphrates, and to hide the girdle in a hole. He is again bidden to go the second time to Euphrates, and to draw the girdle from the hole, and he found it marred. The application follows; for God declares that he would thus deal with the Jews; though he had had them as a belt, he would yet cast them away. As he had adorned them, so he designed them to be an ornament to him; for the glory of God shines forth in his ChurJeremiah The Jews then, as Isaiah says, were a crown of glory and a royal diadem in God’s hand. (Isaiah 62:3) Hence he compares them here most fitly to a belt or a girdle. Though then their condition was honorable, yet God threatens that he would cast them away; so that, being hidden, they might contract rottenness in a cavern of the Euphrates, that is, in Assyria and Chaldea. This is the meaning of the prophecy.

But no doubt a vision is here narrated, and not a real transaction, as some think, who regard Jeremiah as having gone there; but what can be imagined more absurd? He was, we know, continually engaged in his office of a teacher among his own people. Had he undertaken so long a journey, and that twice, it would have taken him some months. Hence contentious must he be, who urges the words of the Prophet, and holds that he must have gone to the Euphrates and hidden there his girdle. We know that this form of speaking is common and often used by the prophets: they narrate visions as facts.

We must also observe, that God might have spoken plainly and without any similitude; but as they were not only ignorant, but also stupid, it was found necessary to reprove their torpidity by an external symbol. This was the reason why God confirmed the doctrine of his Prophet by an external representation. Had God said, “Ye have been to me hitherto as a belt, ye were my ornament and my glory, not indeed through your merit or worthiness, but because I have united you to myself, that ye might be a holy people and a priestly kingdom; but now I am constrained to cast you away; and as a person throws from him and casts a girdle into some hole, so that after a long time he finds it rotten, so it will be with you, after having been hidden a long time beyond Euphrates; ye shall there contract rottenness, which will mar you altogether, so that your appearance will be very different, when a remnant of you shall come from thence:” This indeed might have been sufficient; but in that state of security and dullness in which we know the Jews were, such a simple statement would not have so effectually penetrated into their hearts, as when this symbol was presented to them. The Prophet, therefore, says, that he was girded with a belt, that the belt was hid in a hole near Euphrates, and that there it became marred; and then he adds, so shall it be done to you. This statement, as I have said, more sharply touched the Jews, so that they saw that the judgment of God was at hand.

With regard to the similitude of girdle or breeches, we know how proudly the Jews gloried in the thought that God was bound to them; and he would have really been so, had they been in return faithful to him: but as they had become so disobedient and ungrateful, how could God be bound to them? He had indeed chosen them to be a people to himself, but this condition was added, that they were to be as a chaste wife, as he had become, according to what we have seen, a husband to them. But they had prostituted themselves and had become shamefully polluted with idols. As then they had perfidiously departed from their marriage engagement, was not God freed from his obligations? according to what is said by Isaiah,

“There is no need to give you a bill of divorcement, for your mother is an adulteress.” (Isaiah 1:1)

The Prophet then, in this place, meant in a few words to shake off from the Jews those vain boastings in which they indulged, when they said that they were God’s people and the holy seed of Abraham. “True,” he says, “and I will concede more to you, that you were to God even as a belt, by which men usually adorn themselves; but God adopted you, that you might serve him chastely and faithfully; but now, as ye have made void his covenant, he will cast away this belt, which is a disgrace to him and not an ornament, and will throw it into a cavern where it will rot.” Such is the view we are to take of this belt, as we shall hereafter see more clearly.

The Prophet, by saying that he went to the Euphrates, confirms what he had narrated: he did not indeed mean that he actually went there, but his object was to give the Jews a vivid representation. It is then what Rhetorians call a scene presented to the view; though the place is not changed, yet the thing is set before the eyes by a lively description. ⁷¹⁷¹ Many agree with Calvin that this was a vision and not an actual transaction, such as Gataker, Lowth, Blayney, Adara Clarke, &c. Henry hesitates, but Scott seems to be strongly in favor of a real transaction. Bochart and Venema hold also the latter opinion, only they think that פרת here does not mean “Euphrates,” but Ephrata, that is, Bethlehem, in Judea; but this cannot be maintained. Lowth refers to an instance where a vision is related as a fact, without any mention being made that it was a vision, that is, Genesis 15:5: God brought Abraham forth and shewed to him the stars; and yet it appears from Jeremiah 13:12 that the sun was not set. Blayney remarks, that “the same supposition of a vision must be admitted in other cases, particularly Jeremiah 25:15-29.” Gataker refers to similar instances in Ezekiel 8:3; Ezekiel 11:24. It was most probably a vision; and the Prophet related to the people what God had in a supernatural way exhibited to him. — Ed. Thus the Prophet, as the Jews were deaf, exhibited to their view what they would not hear. This is the reason why he says that he went. For the same purpose is what follows, that at the end of many days God had bidden him to take out the girdle Here also is signified the length of the exile. As to the hole in a rock, what is meant is disgrace; for without honor and esteem the Jews lived in banishment, in the same manner as though they were cast into a cavern. Hence by the hole is signified their ignoble and base condition, that they were like persons removed from the sight of all men and from the common light of day. By the end of many days, is meant, as I have said, the length of their exile, for in a short time they would not have become putrified, and except indeed this had been distinctly expressed, they would have never been convinced of the grievousness of the calamity which was nigh them. Hence he says that the days would be many, so that they might contract putridity while hidden in the hole.

As to the application of the Prophecy, the Prophet then distinctly describes it; but he sets forth with sufficient clearness the main point, when he says, Thus will I mar the stateliness (altitudinem, the altitude or height) of Judah and the great stateliness of Jerusalem Other interpreters unanimously render the word, pride; but as גאון gaun, may be taken in two senses, it means here, I have no doubt, excellency, and this will appear more fully from what follows. ⁷²⁷² It is strangely rendered “reproach — ὕζριν,” by the Septuagint, but “pride” by the Vulgate, — “the haughty ones,” by the Syriac, — “insolence” by the Arabic, and “strength” by the Targum. Blayney agrees with Calvin and renders it “excellency,” and Horsley, “glory.” — Ed. The word then signifies here that dignity with which God had favored the seed of Abraham, when he intended them to be an ornament to himself. So it is said in Exodus 15:7,

“In thy greatness thou wilt destroy the nations.”

And in Isaiah he says,

“I will make thee the excellency of ages.” (Isaiah 60:15)

There no doubt it is to be taken in a good sense. And these things harmonize together, — that God had prepared the Jews for himself as a belt, and then that he cast them from him into a cavern, where they would be for a time without any light and without any glory.

The import of this clause then is, “Though the dignity of Judah and Jerusalem has been great, (for the people whom God had adopted were renowned according to what is said in Deuteronomy 4) though then the stateliness of Judah and Jerusalem has been great, yet I will mar it.” We see how the Prophet takes from the Jews that false confidence by which they deceived themselves. They might indeed have gloried in God, had they acted truly and from the heart: but when they arrogated all things to themselves, and deprived God of his authority, whose subjects they were, how great was their vanity and folly, and how ridiculous always to profess his sacred name, and to say, We are God’s people? for he was no God to them, as they esteemed him as nothing; nay, they disdainfully and reproachfully rejected his yoke. We hence see that the word גאון gaun, is to be taken here in a good sense. The Prophet at the same time reproachfully taunts them, that they abused the name of God and falsely pretended to be his people and heritage. The rest we cannot finish; we shall go on with the subject to-morrow.