1Thus the LORD said to me: Go and buy for yourself a flax girdle and put it upon your loins, and do not let it come into water.2So I bought the girdle according to the word of the LORD and put it upon my loins.3And the word of the LORD came to me a second time, saying:4Take the girdle that you bought, which is upon your loins, and arise, go to the Euphrates, and hide it there in the cleft of the rock.5So I went and hid it in the Euphrates, just as the LORD had commanded me.6And it came to pass after many days that the LORD said to me: Arise, go to the Euphrates and take from there the girdle that I commanded you to hide there.7So I went to the Euphrates and searched and took the girdle from the place where I had hidden it there; and behold, the girdle was ruined; it did not prosper for anything.8And the word of the LORD came to me, saying:9Thus says the LORD: Thus I will ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem.10This evil people that refuses to hear my words, that walks in the stubbornness of their heart, and that has gone after other gods to serve them and to bow down to them—let it become like this girdle that does not prosper for anything.11For just as the girdle clings to the loins of a man, so I made cling to me the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah, declares the LORD, to be for me a people and a name and praise and beauty; yet they did not hear.