This is what the LORD told me: "Go and buy a linen belt for yourself, and put it around your waist. But don't let it get wet."

So I bought the belt according to the LORD's instruction, and put it around my waist.

Take the belt that you bought and that is around your waist. Get up and go to the Euphrates, and hide it there in a crevice in the rock."

For just as the belt clings tightly to a person's waist, so I've made all the people of Israel and all the people of Judah cling tightly to me,' declares the LORD. "I did this so that they would be my people, name, praise, and glory. But they wouldn't listen.'

Wild donkeys stand on the barren hills. They pant for air like jackals. Their eyesight fails because there is no vegetation."

"Like the east wind, I'll scatter them before the enemy. I'll show them my back and not my face, on the day of their downfall.'"

The whole valley of dead bodies and ashes and all the fields as far as the Brook Kidron to the corner of the Horse Gate toward the east will be holy to the LORD. It won't be uprooted or overthrown again, forever."

To Kedar and the kingdoms of Hazor that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon destroyed: This is what the LORD says: "Arise, go against Kedar! Plunder the people of the east!