6. A long time afterward the lord said to me, “Go back to the Euphrates and get the loincloth I told you to hide there.”
7. So I went to the Euphrates and dug it out of the hole where I had hidden it. But now it was rotting and falling apart. The loincloth was good for nothing.
8. Then I received this message from the lord:
9. “This is what the lord says: This shows how I will rot away the pride of Judah and Jerusalem.
10. These wicked people refuse to listen to me. They stubbornly follow their own desires and worship other gods. Therefore, they will become like this loincloth—good for nothing!
11. As a loincloth clings to a man’s waist, so I created Judah and Israel to cling to me, says the lord. They were to be my people, my pride, my glory—an honor to my name. But they would not listen to me.