Tema, Buz, and their _clipt_ neighbours in
Arabia; all of whom were shaken in Jeremiah's day by the Chaldean terror.
Indeed the reference to Ashdod suits the condition of that Philistine city
in the Prophet's time better than its restored prosperity in the
post-exilic age. The substance of verses 15-23 may therefore be reasonably
left to Jeremiah. Verses 24-38 are more doubtful.(340)

2. Parables. (XIII, XVIII-XX, XXXV.)

To the reign of Jehoiakim are usually referred a number of symbolic
actions by Jeremiah, the narratives of which carry no dates. So far as
they imply that the Prophet was still able to move openly about Jerusalem
and the country they might be regarded as earlier than 604, when he was
under restraint and had to hide himself.(341) But this is not certain. We
are left to take them in the order in which they occur in the Book.

The first is that of the waist-cloth, XIII. 1-11. Jeremiah was charged to
buy a linen waist-cloth(342) and after wearing it, but keeping it from
damp, to bury it in the cleft of a rock, and after many days to dig it up,
when he found it rotting. So had the Lord taken Israel to cleave to Him as
such a cloth _cleaves to the loins of a man_; but separated from Him they
had likewise rotted and were good for nothing. Separated by what--God's
action or their own? As it stands the interpretation is complicated. God
spoils Israel because of their pride (verse 9) and Israel spoil themselves
by disobedience and idolatry (verse 10). The complication may be due to a
later addition to the text. But this question is not serious. Neither is
that of the place where Jeremiah is said to have buried the cloth.
_Perath_, the spelling in the text, is the Hebrew name for the Euphrates
and so the Greek and our own versions render it. But the name has not its
usual addition of The River. If the Euphrates be intended the story is
hardly one of fact, but rather a vivid parable of the saturation of the
national life by heathen, corruptive influences from Mesopotamia.(343) Yet
within an hour from Anathoth lies the Wady Farah, a name which corresponds
to the Hebrew _Perath_ or (by a slight change) _Parah_; and the Wady,
familiar as it must have been to Jeremiah, suits the picture, having a
lavish fountain, a broad pool and a stream, all of which soak into the
sand and fissured rock of the surrounding desert.(344) That the Wady Farah
was the scene of the parable is therefore possible, though not
certain