(6) After many days.--Here again the interval is undefined, but it must have been long enough (we may conjecture, perhaps, seventy days) to be an adequate symbol of the seventy years' exile which the act of placing the girdle by Euphrates represented. So in Hosea 3:3 we have "many days" for the undefined duration of the exile of the Ten Tribes.

Verse 6. - After many days. To allow time for the apron to become rotten.

13:1-11 It was usual with the prophets to teach by signs. And we have the explanation, ver. 9-11. The people of Israel had been to God as this girdle. He caused them to cleave to him by the law he gave them, the prophets he sent among them, and the favours he showed them. They had by their idolatries and sins buried themselves in foreign earth, mingled among the nations, and were so corrupted that they were good for nothing. If we are proud of learning, power, and outward privileges, it is just with God to wither them. The minds of men should be awakened to a sense of their guilt and danger; yet nothing will be effectual without the influences of the Spirit.And it came to pass after many days,.... When the girdle had lain long in the hole, by the side of Euphrates; this denotes the length of the Babylonish captivity, which was seventy years:

that the Lord said unto me, arise, go to Euphrates, and take the girdle from thence, which I commanded thee to hide there; which may denote the return of these people from captivity, according to the prophecy of Jeremiah; see Jeremiah 25:11, though this seems to be visionally done, in order to express the wretched state and condition these people were in; either before the captivity, which was the cause of it; or at their return from it, when they were no better for it.