Jeremiah 13:4 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Arise, go to Euphrates God commanded the prophet to go and hide the girdle on the bank of the Euphrates, to signify that the Jews should be carried captive over that river, called the waters of Babylon, Psalms 137:1. In the margin of our ancient English Bibles, it is observed, that, “because this river Perath, or Euphrates, was far from Jerusalem, it is evident that this was done in a vision.” And the generality of the best commentators have been of this opinion; it not being probable that the prophet should have been sent twice upon a journey of such considerable length and difficulty, to the very great loss of his time, merely upon the errands here mentioned, namely, to carry the girdle to the Euphrates, and to fetch it back, when, it seems, every purpose would have been answered altogether as well if the transaction had been represented in vision. Several things, it must be observed, are related in Scripture as actually done, which yet were certainly only performed in visions. One instance we have Jeremiah 25:15-29, where Jeremiah is commanded to take a cup of wine in his hand, and to cause several kings and nations, there enumerated, to drink of it: for it would be a perfect absurdity to believe that he actually went round to all those kings and nations, and made them drink of the contents of his cup. And yet he makes no more distinction in this latter case, than in that now before us, between mental and bodily action. Another remarkable instance we have Genesis 15:5, where the text says, that God brought Abraham forth abroad, and bid him tell the stars; and yet it appears, by a subsequent verse, that the sun was not then gone down. Indeed, in all these cases, and in many more that might be mentioned of a similar kind, it made no difference as to the end God had in view, whether the transactions related were visionary or real; for either way they served equally to represent the events which it was God's pleasure to make known. See Lowth and Blaney.