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. _Pĕrath_, 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 _Pĕrath_ 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.(345) But the ambiguity of these details does not interfere with the moral of the whole. This parable is immediately followed by the ironic metaphor of the Jars Full of Wine, XIII. 12-14, which I have already quoted.(346) Next comes the Parable of the Potter, Ch. XVIII, that might be from any part of the Prophet’s ministry, during which he was free to move in public. This parable is instructive first by disclosing one of the ways along which Revelation reached, and spelt itself out in, the mind of the Prophet. He felt a Divine impulse to go down to the house of the Potter,(347) _and there I will cause thee to hear My Words_, obviously not words spoken to the outward ear. For, as Jeremiah watched the potter at work on _his two stones_,(348) and saw that when the vessel he first attempted was marred he would remould the clay into another vessel as seemed good to him, a fresh conception of the Divine Method with men broke upon Jeremiah and became articulate. A word from the Lord flashed through his eyes upon his mind, just as in his first visions of the almond-blossom and the caldron.(349) XVIII. 5. Then the Word of the Lord came unto me, saying, [6] O House of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter?(350) Behold, as the clay in the hand of the potter, so are ye in My hand.(351)