The Queen mother and the sign of the dirty underwear

God sent Jeremiah on a seeming fool's mission in the early verses of chapter 13:

1. He was to purchase some linen underwear and wear them next to his body without washing them. It sounds like a boy's dream!

2. After a while, he was to go and hide that garment under a rock. Wow, the dream continues.

3. Sometime later, the prophet was to go and dig up the duds to see what had happened to them.

Surprise, surprise, the things were rotten, wasted, worthless. 

This illustration, however, was not the end of the story. It was, in fact, the beginning of a new and terrifying tale that would last seventy years. The soiled Pampers showed the people how they had been in an intimate relationship with God. God had bound Judah and Jerusalem close to his body, and it was a personal bond of love and protection. The people had prostituted themselves before other gods, and thus there would be no pity nor protection in their future distress.

Other illustrations used in this chapter are:

The wineskin - the people, would be like drunks crushed together

the flock - the people were being scattered like sheep by the enemy

the woman in labor - it would all happen quickly

the Ethiopian's skin color - the people could not change their wicked ways

the leopard's spots -

And the wind-driven chaff - they would be scattered to the wind

Each picture vividly portrayed the how, when, and why God would abandon the people who had rejected him. 

But where does the queen mother come into this account? She is right there in Jeremiah 13:18. "Say to the king and to the queen mother, 'Come down from your thrones for your glorious crowns will fall from your heads.'"

So, the question came, when did Judah ever have a queen mother? One of my study Bibles supplied the answer as follows. "king . . . queen mother. Jehoiachin and Nehushta, c. 597 b.c. (cf. 22:24–26; 29:2; 2 Kings 24:8–17). Because the king was only 18 years old, she held the real power." 

When you go to the 2 Kings 24 passage, it reveals the rapidity of God's fulfillment of this prophecy. The following is a sampling of that passage (watch for the name meanings in parentheses). 

2 Kings 24:8 Jehoiachin ("Yahweh establishes") was eighteen years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem for three months. His mother was Nehushta ("The (Great) Serpent" or "The (Great) Brass"), daughter of Elnathan ("God hath given, the gift of God"); she was from Jerusalem. 9 He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father had done. 10 At that time, the officers of Nebuchadnezzar (meaning "Nabu, watch over my heir"), king of Babylon, advanced on Jerusalem and laid siege to it, 11 and Nebuchadnezzar himself came up to the city while his officers were besieging it. 12 Jehoiachin, king of Judah, his mother, his attendants, nobles, and officials all surrendered to him. Then, in the eighth year of the reign of the king of Babylon, he took Jehoiachin prisoner.