What does Jeremias Chapter 13 say, and which statements belong to its speaker?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

The girdle’s commanded use, hiding and retrieval produce the sign. Wine-bottle speech announces drunkenness and scattering. Darkness, royalty and learned-evil images lead to a cleansing question.

Chapter breakdown

Jeremias 13 receives a linen girdle command: obtain, wear about loins and do not put in water. He obtains and wears it, then hides it in a rock hole by Euphrates at a second command. After many days he returns, digs and finds it rotten and useless. The Lord compares this with rotting Juda's and Jerusalem's pride and the unhearing people's strange-god service. Israel and Juda had been brought close like a girdle for people, name, praise and glory.

Every bottle filled with wine provokes a reply that they know this. The announced drunkenness includes land inhabitants, David-line kings, priests, prophets and Jerusalem. Brothers, fathers and sons are scattered, without sparing, pardon or mercy. The admitted verse does not describe smashing clay jars. Hearing without pride and giving glory before dark mountains precede hidden weeping if they refuse, because the flock is captive. King and queen must humble and sit as crown descends; south cities close and all Juda is captive.

Northward seeing leads to a question about the entrusted flock and one about visitation after teaching against their own head, with labor-like sorrows. Great iniquity exposes nakedness and defiles feet. Ethiopian skin and leopard spots illustrate learned evil in a conditional comparison, not an irreversible diagnosis for all sinners. Desert-wind stubble, forgotten God, false trust and revealed shame conclude with observed adulteries and hill abominations and a question about becoming clean. Queen mother, dust-seat, overflowing bottles and a long journey's duration are not added.

The story inside

Opening: The girdle’s commanded use, hiding and retrieval produce the sign. Development: Wine-bottle speech announces drunkenness and scattering. Conclusion: Darkness, royalty and learned-evil images lead to a cleansing question.

Lessons worth keeping

1
The girdle’s commanded use, hiding and retrieval produce the sign.
2
Wine-bottle speech announces drunkenness and scattering.
3
Darkness, royalty and learned-evil images lead to a cleansing question.

Test your recall

Which images and requests does the speaker use, and what does the chapter leave unresolved?

Source edition and notes

Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.

Lines 85345–85348
13:11. For as the girdle sticketh close to the loins of a man, so have I brought close to me all the house of Israel, and all the house of Juda, saith the Lord: that they might be my people, and for a name, and for a praise, and for a glory: but they would not hear.
Lines 85391–85392
13:23. If the Ethiopian can change his skin, or the leopard his spots: you also may do well, when you have learned evil.