The "Good Underwear"
"For as the loincloth clings to one's loins..."
Thus said the Lord to me, “Go and buy yourself a linen loincloth and put it on your loins, but do not dip it in water.” So I bought a loincloth according to the word of the Lord and put it on my loins. And the word of the Lord came to me a second time, saying, “Take the loincloth that you bought and are wearing, and go now to the Euphrates, and hide it there in a cleft of the rock.” So I went and hid it by the Euphrates, as the Lord commanded me. And after many days the Lord said to me, “Go now to the Euphrates, and take from there the loincloth that I commanded you to hide there.” Then I went to the Euphrates and dug, and I took the loincloth from the place where I had hidden it. But now the loincloth was ruined; it was good for nothing (Jeremiah 13:1-7 NRSVUE).
Jeremiah is commanded by God to perform a rather strange and indecorous prophetic sign-act in this passage, which is accomplished in three stages.1
First, Jeremiah is commanded to purchase a new linen loincloth for himself, and to immediately begin wearing it (“put it on your loins,” v. 2). Jeremiah obeys, and we can imagine that he is struck by the, uh, intimate nature of this commandment. The word translated as “loins” in the Hebrew Bible refers to the area below the navel and above the knees, including the thighs, buttocks, lower back, and genitalia; frequently, the word tends to connote masculine or feminine power, and as such functions as a euphemism for genitalia more specifically.2 Tying the loincloth around his waist, we can imagine Jeremiah was acutely and uncomfortably aware of the intention and attention of God on the most private, intimate parts of his life: his very manhood.
Second, Jeremiah is commanded to wear this new linen loincloth on a long journey, wad it up and tuck it into a cleft in a rock near the Euphrates river. As he made his way to his destination, his uncomfortable awareness of divine attention must have become inflected with shame as he sweat through the garment. The loincloth that had only recently been fresh, not even dampened with water, was now damp and foul-smelling. Approaching the Euphrates, Jeremiah knew that there had been no commandment to wash the loincloth in its waters, but merely to hide it in the cleft of a rock on its banks. It must have slowly become clear to him that the garment be soiled was a crucial part of the meaning of the sign-act. Again, Jeremiah obeyed unquestioningly.
Third, after “many days” of waiting for a new word from God, Jeremiah receives the command to return to the place where he had hidden the loincloth and to uncover it. Again, Jeremiah obeys, digging up the loincloth from where he had buried it to discover that it was, as was to be expected, “ruined” and “good for nothing” (v. 7). The contrast between the freshness of the linen loincloth at the beginning of this series of divine commands and utter the ruin of it at the end must have been foremost in Jeremiah’s mind, and one wonders if there was an awful, sinking feeling in his chest as he contemplated what the divine explanation of this sign-act would be.
Then the word of the Lord came to me: Thus says the Lord: Just so I will ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. This evil people, who refuse to hear my words, who stubbornly follow their own will and have gone after other gods to serve them and worship them, shall be like this loincloth, which is good for nothing. For as the loincloth clings to one’s loins, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the Lord, in order that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory. But they would not listen (13:8-11 NRSVUE).
Through this sign-act, God shows the prophet Jeremiah the way in which the rebellious Israel and Judah will be destroyed by the impending Babylonian invasion, an instrument God will use to “ruin [their] pride” (v. 9) Just as the linen garment became soiled and disintegrated, so will Israel and Judah become “ruined” and “good for nothing” (v. 7). This is a terrifying message of coming judgement, an unpopular message that Jeremiah continues to deliver throughout much of the book despite resistance of the people and his own desire to avoid the shame of being unable to persuade them to repent. The discomfort and shame he experienced in the accomplishment of the sign-act carries over to the prophetic rebuke: “But they would not listen” (v. 11).
The hope of eventual restoration is offered elsewhere in the book, but not here; here, the audience is forced to sit with the judgement. But along with the proclamation that Israel and Judah will certainly be ruined, we can detect something else: the honor and intimacy for which they were intended. “For as the loincloth clings to one’s loins, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me,” God says. The people of God are likened to an undergarment nestled against the divine “loins,” an image of startling closeness. And this was meant for a purpose: “in order that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory” (v. 11).
In a class discussion on this passage, one of my friends helpfully pointed out a connection between this prophetic image and the idea of “good underwear,” that special pair of undergarments—the “lacy black pair with the little bows / the ones I picked out for you in Tokyo,”3 for example—that makes a person feel particularly comfortable, attractive, or desirable. This pair of underwear is sometime saved for special occasions, but even if they are not, wearing them makes a person feel especially praiseworthy and glorious. Or I think of the unique, almost archetypal role that the underwear aisle plays in the lives of gay adolescents just beginning to discover their sexuality: that peculiar mixture of longing for the model on the package and the longing to become the model. The underwear advertisements promise praise and glory.
These images might help us to reflect on the profound intimacy with which we as the people of God were created and brought into relationship with God; we were intended to be divine “good underwear,” to be for God “a people, a name, a praise, and a glory” (v. 11). It is shocking to think that we might be, as C.S. Lewis writes in The Weight of Glory, “a real ingredient in the Divine happiness…to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son.”4 But we can be and will be—clinging like a linen loincloth (or “good underwear”) to God.
In writing this piece I was inspired by Corinne Carvalho’s “Drunkenness, Tattoos, and Dirty Underwear: Jeremiah as a Modern Masculine Metaphor,” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Vol. 80 (2018): p. 597-618, which I wholeheartedly recommend!
Katherine Low, “Implications Surround Girding the Loins in Light of Gender, Body, and Power,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Vol. 36, No. 1 (2011): p. 9.
Charli XCI and Billie Eilish, "Guess featuring Billie Eilish" on Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat, Atlantic Records, New York (2023).
C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (New York: HarperOne, 1949), p. 39.
This is beautiful and lovely, as your work always is, but what really got me was the formal citation of Guess. Thank you specifically for that.