131 God told me, "Go and buy yourself some linen shorts. Put them on and keep them on. Don't even take them off to wash them." 2 So I bought the shorts as God directed and put them on. 3 Then God told me, 4 "Take the shorts that you bought and go straight to Perath and hide them there in a crack in the rock." 5 So I did what God told me and hid them at Perath. 6 Next, after quite a long time, God told me, "Go back to Perath and get the linen shorts I told you to hide there." 7 So I went back to Perath and dug them out of the place where I had hidden them. The shorts by then had rotted and were worthless. 8 God explained, 9 "This is the way I am going to ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem - 10 a wicked bunch of people who won't obey me, who do only what they want to do, who chase after all kinds of no-gods and worship them. They're going to turn out as rotten as these old shorts. 11 Just as shorts clothe and protect, so I kept the whole family of Israel under my care" - God's Decree - "so that everyone could see they were my people, a people I could show off to the world and be proud of. But they refused to do a thing I said.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Jeremiah 13:1-11
Commentary on Jeremiah 13:1-11
(Read Jeremiah 13:1-11)
It was usual with the prophets to teach by signs. And we have the explanation, verses 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.