Jeremiah 13:1-11
New Catholic Bible
Chapter 13[a]
Warnings to Judah. 1 The Lord said to me: Go forth and purchase for yourself a loincloth. Wrap it around your loins, but do not dip it in water. 2 I purchased the loincloth as instructed by the Lord and wrapped it around my loins.
3 Then the Lord spoke to me a second time, saying: 4 Take the loincloth that you purchased and are wearing, and go now to the Euphrates and conceal it there in a cleft of the rock. 5 So I went to the Euphrates and hid it as the Lord had commanded me.
6 After a long period of time, the Lord said to me: Go now to the Euphrates and retrieve the loincloth that I instructed you to hide there. 7 And so I returned to the Euphrates and searched for the cleft, and I then retrieved the loincloth from the place where I had hidden it. But the loincloth had now rotted and was good for nothing.
8 Then the word of the Lord came to me: 9 Thus says the Lord: In the same way I will ruin the pride of Judah and the enormous pride of Jerusalem. 10 Because these wicked people refuse to listen to my words and stubbornly follow their own inclinations as they run after other gods to serve them and worship them, they will become like this loincloth, which is good for nothing. 11 For just as a loincloth clings to a man’s loins, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the Lord, in the hope that they would become my people, my praise, and my pride. But they refused to listen.
Read full chapterFootnotes
- Jeremiah 13:1 Judah, which should be a source of renown and glory for the Lord (v. 11), has become intoxicated by its title of chosen people. The oracles collected here by the editor denounce this pride; the prophecies are filled with threats to be carried out in the very near future. The oracles certainly preceded the first deportation in 598 B.C.
