CHAP. XIII.
HEre for twelve verses together is nothing else but a relation, how the Lord commanded Jeremiah to take a linen Girdle, and having worne it a * 1.1 while to go and hide it by the river Euphrates at Babylon, and after a certain time to go and take it up out of the ground again, which he doing found it corrupted so, that it was good for nothing. Whereupon the Lord saith, That Israel was to him as a Girdle, which he had put near about his loins, the seat of his affections, to shew his great love unto that people, but whereas he ex∣pected to have had praise and glory from them, they contrariwise by their wickedness were so corrupted that he had now rejected them. All the questi∣on that can be moved here is, at what time this was done? Why the Lord would teach this by a Girdle, and whether Jeremiah did indeed, as it is here said, or spiritually and in vision only? Ierom thinks that it was done in the * 1.2 dayes of Zedekiah when Nebuchadnezzar came against the Jews, and that therefore it could not be done indeed, but in vision, for want of time; and he thinketh it somewhat absurd, that he should indeed go so long a journey in a loose-garment girt to him amongst a people at so great enmity with the Jews to do this thing, as not being likely to be permitted by them. And this is al∣so followed by Calvin, saying, that it is absurd to hold that it was done so * 1.3 indeed, because to go to Euphrates, and come again, and after many dayes to go and come again, would require a long time, the journey being six hun∣dred and eighty miles from Ierusalem to Babylon, where this river was, and Anathoth was within three miles of Ierusalem, so that it would require many moneths to do this, besides the time coming between one going, and another which is said to be At the end of many dayes, and this phrase, At the end of dayes, is commonly put for a year, as Gen. 4. therefore by these words, From the end of many dayes must be meant a year at the least, if not more, unlesse we shall hold that the dayes wherein this Girdle lay in the cleft of a rock there, were numbred as answering to the years that the Jews should continue in ca∣ptivity,