1. This is what the Lord said to me: “Go and buy a linen belt and put it around your waist, but do not let it touch water.”
2. So I bought a belt, as the Lord directed, and put it around my waist.
3. Then the word of the Lord came to me a second time:
4. “Take the belt you bought and are wearing around your waist, and go now to Perath and hide it there in a crevice in the rocks.”
5. So I went and hid it at Perath, as the Lord told me.
6. Many days later the Lord said to me, “Go now to Perath and get the belt I told you to hide there.”
7. So I went to Perath and dug up the belt and took it from the place where I had hidden it, but now it was ruined and completely useless.
8. Then the word of the Lord came to me:
9. “This is what the Lord says: ‘In the same way I will ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem.