A Soiled Faith

In days of old, ladies who wore long dresses would lift them up past their ankles when they were walking near a mud puddle or climbing up some stairs. One reason why they did this was so they would not trip and fall; but another reason was to keep their clothing nice and clean. In order to keep the hem of their dresses from getting filthy, they had to put forth some effort in holding them up.

In Jeremiah 13:1-11 the symbolism behind holding up one’s garments will be discussed through Jeremiah’s use of the visual aid of a sash or waistband. What we will come to find out is that the effort put forth in holding up one’s clothes represents a willingness to labor for the Lord, and letting ones clothes drag along the ground is symbolic of laziness and a lack of zeal to work in God’s kingdom. Let’s take a look at this passage and see what we can learn about our relationship with God. Afterwards we will come to the realization that we either have a close relationship with the Lord or we have a soiled faith.

A Soiled and Dirty Sash (vv. 1-7)

1 Thus the Lord said to me: “Go and get yourself a linen sash, and put it around your waist, but do not put it in water.” 2 So I got a sash according to the word of the Lord, and put it around my waist. 3 And the word of the Lord came to me the second time, saying, 4 “Take the sash that you acquired, which is around your waist, and arise, go to the Euphrates, and hide it there in a hole in the rock.” 5 So I went and hid it by the Euphrates, as the Lord commanded me. 6 Now it came to pass after many days that the Lord said to me, “Arise, go to the Euphrates, and take from there the sash which I commanded you to hide there.” 7 Then I went to the Euphrates and dug, and I took the sash from the place where I had hidden it; and there was the sash, ruined. It was profitable for nothing.

In verse 1 the Lord told Jeremiah to take up a linen sash and put it around his waist. This sash, that some translations call a girdle, was the Hebrew hagora, which was a “belt or waistband . . . People at work commonly tucked up their clothes into their girdle [or sash], as is done in the East today,”(1) in order to keep their clothes from getting stepped on. The spiritual symbolism of tucking up one’s clothes is an image of readiness and a willingness to labor for the Lord (cf. Luke 12:35-48).

We read in verse 4 that Jeremiah was supposed to take the girdle off from around his waist. This action was symbolic of the wandering heart of Judah (southern Israel) for the people had chosen to stray from the Lord and serve foreign gods and idols. They left the warm intimacy of a relationship with the Lord for the coldness of graven stone images, and they chose to let their garments of faith down to follow the shallow religions of other nations.

We also see in verse 1 that the Lord told Jeremiah not to put the sash in water. This action represented an unwashed cloth, “signifying the moral filth of His people, like the literal filth of a garment worn constantly next to the skin, without being washed.”(2) Dirt and filth are commonly used as illustrations of sin in a person’s life, and through the prophet Jeremiah the Lord was telling Judah that she was completely covered in the dirt of sin.

In verses 4 and 5 the Lord commanded Jeremiah to take the sash to the Euphrates River and bury it in a hole in the rock. Commentator James Smith says that a trip to the Euphrates would have been a 300-350 mile trek in one direction.(3) This long journey was symbolic of the great distance that God’s people had strayed from Him in their relationship.

“The reference [to the Euphrates River] might be to Judah’s acceptance of Assyrian religion, as much as to the threat of exile in Babylon.”(4) We know that as a result of Judah’s disobedience, the Lord later allowed His people to be taken captive by the Babylonians and carried off, thus the hole mentioned in verse 4 could represent the prisons into which the Jews were to be thrown.(5)

Whenever we stray from the Lord we tend to feel like we are in a dark and muddy hole in the ground like the sash was. For example, when King Saul was rejected as King of Israel for straying from the Lord, he fled and hid from David’s men in a cave (1 Samuel 24:3), which was basically a hole in the ground. While he was there David almost decided to take Saul’s life (1 Samuel 24:4), showing us that we are on the edge of destruction whenever we disobey the Lord.