“This is what the Lord said to me: ‘Go and buy a linen belt and put it round your waist, but do not let it touch water.’ So I bought a belt, as the Lord directed, and put it round my waist.

Then the word of the Lord came to me a second time: ‘Take the belt you bought and are wearing round your waist, and go to Perath and hide it there in a crevice in the rocks.’ So I went and hid it at Perath as the Lord told me.

Many days later the Lord said to me, ‘Go now to Perath and get the belt I told you to hide there.’ So I went to Perath and dug up the belt and took it from the place where I had hidden it, but now it was ruined and completely useless.” (Jeremiah 13:1–7)

This enacted parable gives a fascinating insight into Jeremiah’s ministry and his personal relationship with God. In his quiet times of prayer and meditation he received an instruction to go and buy a linen loincloth. The NIV translation “belt” is not only wrong, but it gives a completely wrong impression and misses the whole point of the parable. The loincloth was the most intimate garment worn by a man around his loins and clinging tightly to his body. It was not a belt that was seen in public but an intimately personal and unseen garment.

The Meaning of the Garment

Jeremiah perceived immediately what God was saying to him. This garment represented his personal relationship with God that was something intimate between him and the Lord Almighty his Saviour. But it was much more than an individual and personal experience. What God was trying to convey to the Prophet was the unique and intimate covenant relationship through which the people of Israel were bound closely to God. That relationship was so intimate that it was like a loincloth that clings tightly to a man’s body; or like a nappy (diaper) that is wrapped around a baby.

In order to understand the message that God was conveying to Jeremiah he was told not only to go and purchase a linen loincloth; but actually, to put it on and wear it for an unspecified period. He was told not even to wash it – “do not let it touch water” – so, presumably, it could not have been for a very long time!

What God was trying to convey to the Prophet was the unique and intimate covenant relationship through which the people of Israel were bound closely to God.

The next instruction from God was to take off the loincloth and go and bury it at a particular spot on the Euphrates River. The River Euphrates was actually a long way away from Jerusalem and most scholars think that the word ‘Perath’ actually refers to a river running through the territory of Benjamin which was Jeremiah’s home region and would have been easy for him to access. He probably knew the area reasonably well from his childhood, so he had no difficulty in finding a crevice alongside the river bank where he could bury the loincloth and subsequently remember where it was buried. This place was to represent the great river of Babylon.

Ruin and Destruction

After an unspecified number of days, the word of the Lord came again to Jeremiah, “Go now to Perath and get the loincloth I told you to hide there.” So, Jeremiah did just that and he discovered that the linen cloth had disintegrated so badly that it was ruined and completely useless.

It is not difficult to see the message that God was conveying to Jeremiah. The word he received was “In the same way I will ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem” (Jer 13:9).

Jeremiah discovered that the linen cloth had disintegrated so badly that it was ruined and completely useless.

The date of this message is not made clear; but it obviously was before the surrender of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 598 BC and it would not have been during the reign of Josiah when every effort was being made to remove all traces of idolatry and to reaffirm the covenant relationship with God. This puts the enacted parable sometime during the 11-year reign of Jehoiakim when idolatry spread everywhere across Judah and was even to be seen on the streets of Jerusalem.

God’s Purposes for Israel

Jeremiah was told by God, “For as a loincloth is bound round a man’s waist, so I bound the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah to me” (Jer 13:11). It was this beautiful intimate relationship between God and the people of Israel that should have enabled them to fulfil God’s purposes of revealing himself – his nature and purposes – through them to the Gentile nations.

It was this missionary task that was at the centre and heart of the covenant relationship that God had established in the time of Moses. Israel was to be his servant, bound to him in a personal relationship so that when the Gentile nations looked at the people of Israel, they would see the very Face of God. And through them God would be able to convey his word to the world.

It was divinely purposed that when the Gentile nations looked at the people of Israel, they would see the very Face of God.

But Israel and Judah did not listen to the Lord. He said that it was his intention that the people of Israel should “be my people for my renown and praise and honour. But they have not listened” (Jer 13:11). That was the tragedy written into the history of Israel and now personified in the city of Jerusalem whose pride and arrogance prevented them from hearing the word of the Lord and fulfilling his purposes through them.

God’s Purposes for Believers Today

The beautiful relationship intended by God with Israel is also offered to believers in Jesus as Lord and Messiah. Paul speaks of this same intimate relationship when he urges people to put on Christ. He urges believers to “Put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:22–24).

If the people of Israel had listened to God through the prophets whom he sent to them in each generation, the tragic destruction of Jerusalem, the slaughter of its people and the exile in Babylon would never have happened. In the same way, God fulfilled his promise in sending Messiah to the people of Israel and through him the good news of salvation was, and is, offered to all believers.

The beautiful relationship intended by God with Israel is also offered to believers in Jesus as Lord and Messiah.

But like the loincloth hidden in the ground, our faith, if not practised and constantly renewed through our intimacy with Christ, soon becomes contaminated by the world and useless to God for fulfilling his purposes through us (his ecclesia) to transform the society in which we live.

Through Jesus our Lord and Saviour, we can be intimately bound in a relationship of love and trust with our Heavenly Father. Like Jeremiah, we can listen to him and he will speak with us, and through us, so that others will see his Face and hear his word through our lives.