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Jeremiah 13: What the Passage Says

106 claims across 27 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Jeremiah 13 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD tells Jeremiah to buy a linen belt, wear it, hide it in a rock by the Euphrates, and dig it up later, by which time it is ruined and useless. God explains the sign: in the same way he will ruin the pride of Judah and Jerusalem, who were meant to cling to him but refused to listen. A second saying, about wineskins filled with wine, turns into a warning that God will fill the kings, priests, prophets, and people with drunkenness and smash them against one another. The chapter ends with a call to give God honor before darkness falls, word that the king and queen mother will lose their crowns, and questions to Jerusalem about her unfaithfulness and when she will be clean.

Claim by Claim

  1. 13:1
    • The LORD spoke to Jeremiah.
    • The LORD told him to go and buy himself a linen waistcloth.
    • The LORD told him to put it on his loins.
    • The LORD told him not to put it in water.
  2. 13:2
    • Jeremiah bought the waistcloth as the LORD had said.
    • Jeremiah put the waistcloth on his loins.
  3. 13:3
    • The word of the LORD came to Jeremiah a second time.
  4. 13:4
    • The LORD told him to take the waistcloth he had bought, which was on his loins.
    • The LORD told him to get up and go to the Euphrates.
    • The LORD told him to hide the waistcloth there in a cleft of the rock.
  5. 13:5
    • Jeremiah went and hid the waistcloth by the Euphrates.
    • He did it as the LORD had commanded him.
  6. 13:6
    • After many days the LORD spoke to Jeremiah.
    • The LORD told him to get up and go to the Euphrates.
    • The LORD told him to take the waistcloth from there.
    • The LORD said he had commanded him to hide it there.
  7. 13:7
    • Jeremiah went to the Euphrates.
    • Jeremiah dug.
    • Jeremiah took the waistcloth from the place where he had hidden it.
    • The waistcloth was ruined.
    • The waistcloth was good for nothing.
  8. 13:8
    • The word of the LORD came to Jeremiah.
  9. 13:9
    • The LORD said that in this same manner he will ruin the pride of Judah.
    • The LORD said he will ruin the great pride of Jerusalem.
  10. 13:10
    • This people is evil.
    • They refuse to hear the LORD's words.
    • They walk in the stubbornness of their own heart.
    • They go after other gods to serve them and to bow down to them.
    • They will become like this waistcloth, which is good for nothing.
  11. 13:11
    • A waistcloth clings to a man's loins.
    • In the same way the LORD made the whole house of Israel cling to him.
    • In the same way the LORD made the whole house of Judah cling to him.
    • This is declared by the LORD.
    • The purpose was that they might be a people for him.
    • The purpose was that they might be for him a name, a praise, and a glory.
    • They did not listen.
  12. 13:12
    • Jeremiah is to speak this word to them.
    • The LORD, the God of Israel, says that every jar will be filled with wine.
    • The people will reply to Jeremiah.
    • The people will ask whether they do not certainly know that every jar is filled with wine.
  13. 13:13
    • Jeremiah is then to say to them what the LORD says.
    • The LORD is about to fill all the inhabitants of this land with drunkenness.
    • This includes the kings who sit on David's throne.
    • This includes the priests.
    • This includes the prophets.
    • This includes all the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
  14. 13:14
    • The LORD will smash them one against another.
    • He will smash the fathers and the sons together.
    • This is declared by the LORD.
    • The LORD will not pity.
    • The LORD will not spare.
    • The LORD will not have mercy, but will destroy them.
  15. 13:15
    • The hearers are commanded to hear.
    • The hearers are commanded to give ear.
    • The hearers are commanded not to be proud.
    • The reason is that the LORD has spoken.
  16. 13:16
    • They are commanded to give glory to the LORD their God.
    • This is to be done before he brings darkness.
    • This is to be done before their feet stumble on the mountains at dusk.
    • They look for light.
    • He turns the light into deep gloom.
    • He makes it thick darkness.
  17. 13:17
    • If they will not hear it, Jeremiah's soul will weep in secret places.
    • The weeping is because of their pride.
    • His eye will weep bitterly and run down with tears.
    • The reason is that the LORD's flock has been taken captive.
  18. 13:18
    • Jeremiah is to speak to the king and to the queen mother.
    • They are told to bring themselves low.
    • They are told to sit down.
    • The reason is that what is on their heads has come down.
    • What has come down is the crown of their glory.
  19. 13:19
    • The cities of the Negev are shut up.
    • No one opens them.
    • Judah is carried into exile, all of it.
    • It is wholly carried into exile.
  20. 13:20
    • They are told to lift up their eyes.
    • They are told to see those coming from the north.
    • The question is asked where the flock that was given to her is.
    • The flock is called her beautiful flock.
  21. 13:21
    • The question is asked what she will say when he punishes her.
    • She herself taught them to be captains and chief over her.
    • The question is asked whether pangs will not seize her.
    • The pangs are like those of a woman in labor.
  22. 13:22
    • She may say in her heart, asking why these things have come upon her.
    • It is because of the greatness of her iniquity that her skirts are stripped off.
    • Her heels are made bare.
  23. 13:23
    • The question is asked whether a Cushite can change his skin.
    • The question is asked whether a leopard can change his spots.
    • In the same way, they cannot do good.
    • They are accustomed to doing evil.
  24. 13:24
    • The LORD will scatter them like stubble that passes away.
    • It is driven by the wind of the wilderness.
  25. 13:25
    • This is her lot.
    • It is the portion measured out to her from the LORD.
    • This is declared by the LORD.
    • The reason is that she has forgotten him.
    • The reason is that she trusted in falsehood.
  26. 13:26
    • The LORD will pull her skirts up over her face.
    • Her shame will be seen.
  27. 13:27
    • The LORD has seen her adulteries.
    • The LORD has seen her neighings.
    • The LORD has seen the lewdness of her whoredom.
    • The LORD has seen her abominations on the hills in the fields.
    • Woe is pronounced upon Jerusalem.
    • The question is asked whether she will not be made clean.
    • The question is asked how long it will yet be.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

13:1
The King James "girdle" is not a belt for holding up clothing but a wraparound cloth worn next to the skin at the waist, like a loincloth or waistcloth. Linen was the fine fabric used for priests' clothing. "Do not let it touch water" most likely means it was never to be washed.
13:3
"The word of the LORD came to me" was the usual way a prophet said that God had given him a message to pass on.
13:4
The Hebrew word is *Perath*. Spelled this way it normally means the Euphrates, the great river of Mesopotamia, some 350 miles from Jerusalem, a journey of weeks, made twice. But the same consonants also spell Parah, a village with a spring about four miles northeast of Jerusalem. Ancient and modern readers have gone both ways, and the Hebrew does not settle it.
13:7
Cloth buried in damp ground rots. It goes soft and falls apart in your hands.
13:9
The Hebrew word behind "pride" covers both arrogance and splendor, the thing a nation boasts of as well as the boasting itself.
13:10
"Imagination" in 1611 English did not mean daydreaming or creativity. It meant the settled scheming of a person's own mind, the will set on its own plans, which is why the rendering has "stubborn thinking."
13:11
After Solomon's death the kingdom split in two: the northern kingdom, called Israel, and the southern kingdom, called Judah, with Jerusalem as its capital. "The whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah" means the entire people, both halves.
13:12
The container is either a skin bottle sewn from a whole animal hide or a large clay wine jar; the Hebrew word covers both. The line reads like an everyday saying, and the hearers throw it back as an obvious remark, which is what lets the next verse turn it against them.
13:13
"The kings who sit on David's throne" means the line of rulers descended from David, who had reigned in Jerusalem for roughly four centuries by Jeremiah's day.
13:14
"Smash them against one another" continues the image of verse 12: jars knocked together and broken. It works because the same Hebrew word can mean a breakable clay vessel as well as a wineskin.
13:16
"Give glory to God" was a set phrase used when someone was pressed to admit the truth openly. The picture that follows is of a traveler caught on mountain paths at dusk, when the light fails before shelter is reached.
13:17
"The LORD's flock" is the people themselves; kings and rulers were commonly called shepherds, and their subjects the flock, throughout the ancient Near East.
13:18
In Judah the king's mother held a recognized position at court, with rank above the king's wives, and was addressed by a formal title. Judah is generally taken to be under King Jehoiachin and his mother Nehushta here; both were deported to Babylon in 597 BC after a reign of three months.
13:19
"The cities of the south" is the Negev, the dry grazing country south of Judah, the region farthest from an invader coming from the north, so its being sealed off means the whole land is cut off, with nowhere left to flee.
13:20
Armies from Mesopotamia could not cross the desert directly and had to follow the Euphrates north and then come down through Syria, so invasion always arrived at Judah from the north.
13:21
The Hebrew is compressed and has been read more than one way: either that foreign powers Judah once courted as allies and trained in its ways will now be set over it as masters, or that the people Judah taught to be its leaders will turn on it. The verse does not specify who "them" are.
13:22
Stripping a woman naked in public was a known punishment and public shaming for adultery. "Heels made bare" in the King James is a euphemism: the Hebrew avoids naming the lower body directly.
13:23
The King James "Ethiopian" translates *Cushite*, a person from Cush, the kingdom on the Nile south of Egypt, in what is now Sudan. The point is a fixed, unchangeable trait, not a judgment on the person.
13:24
After grain was threshed and tossed into the air, the light broken straw blew away while the heavy kernels fell, the standard image for something worthless and scattered beyond recovery.
13:25
"Lot" and "measured share" are the language of dividing land: property was allotted by casting lots and marked off with a measuring line. The share being handed out here is punishment.
13:26
The image of verse 22 is repeated, but now God is named as the one doing it rather than the invading army. Pulling a woman's skirt up over her face was a public shaming, the recognized humiliation of an adulteress, and it fits the picture of a nation described as an unfaithful wife.
13:27
Prophets routinely described the nation's turning to other gods as a wife's unfaithfulness, since the bond between God and Israel was spoken of as a marriage. "On the hills and in the fields" points to the open-air shrines set up on hilltops, where worship of other gods took place, sometimes involving sexual rites, which is what makes the language of prostitution and the neighing of horses in heat more than mere insult.

Read Jeremiah 13