Jeremiah 13:6

13:1-11 It was usual with the prophets to teach by signs. And we have the explanation, ver. 9-11. The people of Israel had been to God as this girdle. He caused them to cleave to him by the law he gave them, the prophets he sent among them, and the favours he showed them. They had by their idolatries and sins buried themselves in foreign earth, mingled among the nations, and were so corrupted that they were good for nothing. If we are proud of learning, power, and outward privileges, it is just with God to wither them. The minds of men should be awakened to a sense of their guilt and danger; yet nothing will be effectual without the influences of the Spirit.

And it came to pass after many days,.... When the girdle had lain long in the hole, by the side of Euphrates; this denotes the length of the Babylonish captivity, which was seventy years: that the Lord said unto me, arise, go to Euphrates, and take the girdle from thence, which I commanded thee to hide there; which may denote the return of these people from captivity, according to the prophecy of Jeremiah; see Jeremiah 25:11, though this seems to be visionally done, in order to express the wretched state and condition these people were in; either before the captivity, which was the cause of it; or at their return from it, when they were no better for it.

(6) 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.

After the course of many days - these are the seventy years of the captivity - the prophet is to fetch the girdle again. He went, digged (חפר, whence we see that the hiding in the cleft of the rock was a burying in the rocky soil of the Euphrates bank), and found the girdle marred, fit for nothing. These words correspond to the effect which the exile was designed to have, which it has had, on the wicked, idolatrous race. The ungodly should as Moses' law, Leviticus 26:36 , Leviticus 26:39 , declared, perish in the land of their enemies; the land of their enemies will devour them, and they that remain shall pine or moulder away in their iniquities and in the iniquities of their fathers. This mouldering (ימּקּוּ) is well reproduced in the marring (נשׁחת) of the girdle. It is no contradiction to this, that a part of the people will be rescued from the captivity and brought back to the land of their fathers. For although the girdle which the prophet had put on his loins symbolized the people at large, yet the decay of the same at the Euphrates sets forth only the physical decay of the ungodly part of the people, as Jeremiah 13:10 intimates in clear words: "This evil people that refuses to hear the word of the Lord, etc., shall be as this girdle." The Lord will mar the גּאון of Judah and Jerusalem. The word means highness in both a good and in an evil sense, glory and self-glory. Here it is used with the latter force.

This is shown both by the context, and by a comparison of the passage Leviticus 26:19 , that God will break the נּאון of the people by sore judgments, which is the foundation of the present Jeremiah 13:9 . - In Jeremiah 13:11 the meaning of the girdle is given, in order to explain the threatening in Jeremiah 13:9 and Jeremiah 13:10 . As the girdle lies on the loins of a man, so the Lord hath laid Israel on Himself, that it may be to Him for a people and for a praise, for a glory and an adornment, inasmuch as He designed to set it above all other nations and to make it very glorious; cf. Deuteronomy 26:19 , whither these words point back.

Go down —The temple (where Jeremiah had been prophesying) was higher than the king's palace on Mount Zion (Jeremiah 36:10, 12; 2 Chronicles 23:20). Hence the phrase, "Go down." the king of Judah —perhaps including each of the four successive kings, to whom it was consecutively addressed, here brought together in one picture: Shallum, Jeremiah 22:11; Jehoiakim, Jeremiah 22:13-18; Jeconiah, Jeremiah 22:24; Zedekiah, the address to whom (Jeremiah 21:1, 11, 12) suggests notice of the rest. 2. these gates —of the king's palace. 3. Jehoiakim is meant here especially: he, by oppression, levied the tribute imposed on him by Pharaoh-necho, king of Egypt (2 Chronicles 36:3), and taxed his people, and took their labor without pay, to build gorgeous palaces for himself (Jeremiah 22:13-17), and shed innocent blood, for example, that of Urijah the prophet (Jeremiah 26:20-24; 2 Kings 23:35; 24:4). 4. upon the throne of David —literally, "or David on his throne" (see on Jeremiah 13:13). This verse is repeated substantially from Jeremiah 17:25. his servants —so the Keri. But Chetib, singular, "his servant;" that is, distributively, " each with his servants;" Jeremiah 17:25, "their princes." 5. I swear by myself —(Hebrews 6:13, 17). God swears because it seemed to them incredible that the family of David should be cast off. ## this house —the king's, where Jeremiah spake (Jeremiah 22:4). 6.