Cloth That No Longer Clings

A “girdle” in 1611 was any band worn about the waist; the Hebrew ezor is a waistcloth worn next to the skin, the most intimate item of dress. Linen was the fabric of priestly garments (Leviticus 16:4), and Jeremiah came from a priestly family (1:1). He is told to wear it unwashed.

Jeremiah buys and wears the cloth without asking what it is for. No explanation is given at this stage, and none is requested; the purpose of the sign is withheld until verse 9, so for a time the prophet walks about carrying a message he has not yet been told.

The second word arrives with no stated gap, unlike the third, which waits “many days” (verse 6). The Book of Jeremiah uses the same phrase, “the second time”, in 33:1, when the word reaches him shut up in the court of the prison.

“Euphrates” renders the Hebrew Perath, the name used for the river of Eden in Genesis 2:14 and for the boundary of the land promised to Abraham in Genesis 15:18. A town called Parah stood in Benjamin (Joshua 18:23), a few miles from Anathoth, which is why the nearer site is proposed.

The wording of the obedience mirrors the command almost word for word. “As the LORD commanded me” is the refrain that closes each stage of the tabernacle’s making in Exodus 39 and 40. If the distant river is meant, Ezra’s journey from Babylon took four months (Ezra 7:9).

God calls it the girdle “which I commanded thee to hide there”, taking ownership of the whole design. The length of “many days” is never stated, and the gap is the point: the cloth has to lie long enough, away from the body, for time to do the work.

He has to dig, so earth has filled the cleft since the hiding. “Marred” is shachat, the verb Genesis 6:12 uses when “all flesh had corrupted his way”, and it returns in 18:4 for the clay “marred in the hand of the potter”. “Profitable for nothing” is the verdict of an inspector.

The meaning comes as a new word from the LORD, not as Jeremiah’s own deduction from what he dug up. The Book of Jeremiah keeps the sign and its interpretation in separate revelations, so the prophet obeys first and understands afterwards.

“Mar” repeats the verb of verse 7, so what happened to the cloth is what will happen to Judah. The word for “pride”, ga’on, also means swelling or height; it is the same word as “the swelling of Jordan” in 12:5, the river’s flood in its full rise.

“Imagination” translates sherirut, better rendered stubbornness. Of its ten appearances in the Old Testament eight are in Jeremiah, which makes it one of the book’s signature words. In 1611 an imagination was a plan devised in the mind, not a flight of fancy.

“Cleave” is dabaq, the verb of Genesis 2:24, where a man shall “cleave unto his wife”, and of Deuteronomy 10:20, “to him shalt thou cleave”. The four purposes, people, name, praise and glory, echo Deuteronomy 26:19, where Israel is to be set high “in praise, and in name, and in honour”.

The “bottle” is a nebel, here an earthenware wine jar rather than a skin. The people’s retort sounds like a drinking proverb, a saying so plain that repeating it is faintly insulting. The full title, “the LORD God of Israel”, is used for a line they think is a platitude.

“Kings” is plural: not one king but the whole line that will sit on David’s throne until the end. Isaiah 28:7 had already pictured priest and prophet reeling with strong drink. The wine will return as the cup of the LORD’s fury, passed to every nation in 25:15.

“Dash” is naphats, the verb for smashing pottery, as in Psalm 2:9, “dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel”. The jars of verse 12 are broken against each other. Three refusals, pity, spare and mercy, stand in a row with no gap between them.

Two verbs of hearing, then a single command, “be not proud”, which picks up the pride of Judah from verse 9. The reason given is as short as the command: the LORD has spoken, and nothing further is offered to persuade.

“Give glory” is the phrase Joshua uses to Achan (Joshua 7:19), meaning confess before it is too late. The “dark mountains” are literally the mountains of twilight, dusk on a hill road. “Shadow of death” is tsalmaveth, the same word as Psalm 23:4.

The Hebrew doubles the verb, “weeping it shall weep”, and piles three phrases for tears on one another. Jeremiah’s grief is kept hidden, “in secret places”, not performed before the people. The flock is called the LORD’s even as it is led away.

The “queen” is the gebirah, the queen mother, who held a formal office in Judah (1 Kings 15:13). Most commentators suppose Jehoiachin and his mother Nehushta, deported together (2 Kings 24:15; Jeremiah 22:26, 29:2), though the verse names neither. “Principalities” is literally what sits upon the head.

The “south” is the Negev, the dry country toward Beersheba. Cities are shut when there is no one left to open them. “Wholly” renders shelomim, from the root of shalom, wholeness: the only completeness left is the completeness of the exile.

The verbs in the Hebrew turn to a feminine singular, so the city herself is addressed as a woman, a shepherdess asked where her sheep went. The threat from the north picks up the boiling pot facing from the north in Jeremiah’s first vision (1:13–14).

The verse is hard in Hebrew. “Captains” is alluphim, which can mean chiefs or close friends (as in Proverbs 16:28), so Jerusalem may be facing the very allies she courted. The pain of a woman in labour recurs through the book as the image of sudden, unavoidable distress (4:31, 6:24, 22:23).

“Skirts discovered” means the hem of the robe lifted, a public shaming. “Made bare” translates a verb from the root of chamas, violence, so the heels are not merely uncovered but treated roughly. The answer to her question is one word in Hebrew, the greatness of her iniquity.

The “Ethiopian” is a Cushite, from the lands up the Nile beyond Egypt. The Book of Jeremiah later gives a Cushite, Ebed-melech, one of its few acts of courage (38:7–13). “Accustomed” is limmudey, the root of verse 21’s “taught”: Judah was trained in evil as she trained her captains.

“The wind of the wilderness” is the hot east wind off the desert, the same wind Jeremiah described in 4:11 as too dry to winnow or cleanse. Stubble is lighter than chaff; it does not fall back to the floor but is carried off the field altogether.

“Lot” and “portion of thy measures” are the language of land division in Joshua, where each tribe’s share was measured and drawn by lot. The share now measured out is judgment. “Falsehood” is sheqer, a word the Book of Jeremiah uses more than any other book of the Old Testament.

The speaker is now God himself, not an enemy. Nahum 3:5 uses almost the same words against Nineveh, “I will discover thy skirts upon thy face”, so Jerusalem is being treated the way a pagan capital was treated a generation earlier.

“Neighings” recalls 5:8, where the men of Judah are stallions neighing after a neighbour’s wife. The hills in the fields are the high places of worship. The final question, literally “after when yet?”, is left standing here; the book answers it much later, in 33:8, with “I will cleanse them”.