Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 13

A linen girdle. —The point of comparison is given in Jeremiah 13:11. Of all garments worn by man the girdle was that most identified with the man’s activity, nearest to his person. The “linen girdle” was part of Jeremiah’s priestly dress (Exodus 28:40; Leviticus 16:4), and this also was significant in the interpretation of the symbolic act. Israel, represented as the girdle of Jehovah, had been chosen for consecrated uses. The word “get” implies the act of purchasing, and this too was not without its symbolic significance.

Put it not in water. —The work of the priest as a rule necessarily involved frequent washings both of flesh and garments. The command in this case was therefore exceptional. The unwashed girdle was to represent the guilt of the people unpurified by any real contact with the clean water of repentance (Ezekiel 36:25). In the filthy garments of Joshua, in Zechariah 3:3, we have similar symbolism. This seems a much more natural interpretation than that which starts from the idea that water would spoil the girdle, and sees in the command the symbol of God’s care for His people.

The second time. —No dates are given, but the implied interval must have been long enough for the girdle to become foul, while the prophet apparently waited for an explanation of the strange command.

Go to Euphrates. The Hebrew word Phrath is the same as that which, everywhere else in the Old Testament, is translated as the Greek name for the river, Euphrates. It has been suggested:

1. that the word means “river” generally, or “rushing water,” applied with special distinction to the “great river,” and therefore it may have been used here in its general sense; and
2. that it may stand here for Ephratah, or Bethlehem, as the scene of Jeremiah’s symbolic actions, the place being chosen because of its suggestive similarity to Euphrates.

These conjectures, however, have no other basis than the assumed improbability of a double journey of two hundred and fifty miles; and this, as has been shown, can hardly be considered a serious factor in the question. In Jeremiah 51:0, there can be no doubt that the writer means Euphrates. It may also be noted, as a coincidence confirming this view, that Jeremiah appears as personally known to Nebuchadnezzar in Jeremiah 39:11. Those who consider Ephratah the scene of what is recorded here point to the caves and clefts in the rocky region between Bethlehem and the Dead Sea as agreeing with the description. On the other hand, the form Prath is nowhere found as a substitute for the familiar Ephratah.

A hole of the rock. Better, cleft. In the lower part of its course, the Euphrates flows through an alluvial plain, and the words therefore point to some part of its upper course above Pylæ, where it flows through a valley that is more or less rocky.

After many days. — Here again the interval is undefined, but it must have been long enough (we may conjecture, perhaps, seventy days) to be an adequate symbol of the seventy years’ exile which the act of placing the girdle by Euphrates represented. So in Hosea 3:3 we have many days for the undefined duration of the exile of the Ten Tribes.

The girdle was marred. —The symbolism is explained in Jeremiah 13:9. The girdle stained, decayed, worthless, was a parable of the state of Judah after the exile, stripped of all its outward greatness, losing the place which it had once occupied among the nations of the earth.