Jeremiahchapter 13
27 verses · BSBJeremiah book hub →
Speaks with:Jeremiah 9×3Jeremiah 13×2Leviticus 26×2Jeremiah 16×2Ezekiel 24×2Jeremiah 6×2
Summary
Chapter summary
Two enacted parables. Jeremiah buys a linen girdle, wears it, hides it in a cleft of the rock by the Euphrates, and returns to find it marred and profitable for nothing. So will Jehovah mar the pride of Judah, who once clave to him as a girdle clings to the loins. Then the proverb of the jars: every jar filled with wine, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem made drunk and dashed one against another. Pride is warned before darkness falls and the flock is carried away. The chapter's unforgettable question exposes habit hardened into nature: 'Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil' (13:23).
Context
Prophecy · Jeremiah — Jeremiah overview
- A. 1–11 The Linen Girdle Hidden in a Cleft by the River
- B. 12–17 Every Jar Filled with Wine; Give Glory Before Darkness Falls
- C. 18–27 Can the Ethiopian Change His Skin, or the Leopard His Spots?
The outline
A.The Linen Girdle Hidden in a Cleft by the Rivervv. 1 to 11
Read vv. 1 to 11 →B.Every Jar Filled with Wine; Give Glory Before Darkness Fallsvv. 12 to 17
Read vv. 12 to 17 →C.Can the Ethiopian Change His Skin, or the Leopard His Spots?vv. 18 to 27
Read vv. 18 to 27 →
The world behind this chapter
Jeremiah 13The history
Linen was the priestly fabric and the fine fabric — cool, white, expensive, and worn next to the skin. A sash wrapped tight at the waist was the most intimate garment a man owned, which is exactly the point of the picture: God had bound Israel to himself like a belt on a man's body.
Where he buried it is argued over. The word used is the ordinary Hebrew name for the Euphrates, which would mean a journey of several hundred miles each way, twice; but a village called Parah lay only a few miles from Anathoth, with a spring and rock clefts, and the name is spelled almost identically. Readers have taken it both ways for centuries, and both readings land on the same message — the belt rots where Babylon is.
The wine-jar saying uses a household object. Wine was stored in large clay jars sealed with clay stoppers, and the proverb every jar shall be filled with wine sounds like a truism until it is turned: God will fill everyone in the land — kings, priests, prophets, citizens — with drunkenness, and then smash them against each other.
The chapter also names a punishment reserved for captured cities: the skirts of a woman lifted, her shame exposed. Ancient armies humiliated the defeated exactly this way, and the image is being applied to the capital.
What it meant to them
The first hearers watched a man walk out with a good belt and come back with a rotted rag. Nobody forgets an object lesson like that, which is why prophets used them.
The line about the Ethiopian's skin and the leopard's spots is not a comment about race; it is a comment about habit. A people practised in doing evil can no more change themselves than a leopard can rearrange its coat. That is why the chapter ends in a plea rather than a plan.
Sources cited
- Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: Jeremiah
- Walton, Matthews and Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Jeremiah 13. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.