“Now what are you doing by going to Egypt [in search of an ally],
To drink the [muddy] waters of the Nile?
Or what are you doing by going to Assyria [in search of an ally],
To drink the [muddy] waters of the Euphrates?

“Get up and take the waistband that you have bought, which is [wrapped] around your loins, and go to the [river] Euphrates and hide it there in a crevice of the rock.”

So I went and hid it by the Euphrates, as the Lord had commanded me.

And after many days the Lord said to me, “Get up, go to the Euphrates and get the waistband which I commanded you to hide there.”

Then I went to the Euphrates and dug, and I took the waistband from the place where I had hidden it. And behold, the waistband was decayed and ruined; it was completely worthless.

Concerning Egypt, against the army of Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt, which was by the river Euphrates at Carchemish, which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon defeated [decisively] in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of Judah:

Do not let the swift man run,
Nor the mighty man escape;
In the north by the river Euphrates
They have stumbled and fallen.

For that day belongs to the Lord God of hosts,
A day of vengeance, that He may avenge Himself on His adversaries.
And the sword will devour and be satiated
And drink its fill of their blood;
For the Lord God of hosts has a sacrifice [like that of a great sin offering]
In the north country by the river Euphrates.

And that the fords [across the Euphrates] have been blocked and [the ferries] seized,
And they have set the [great] marshes on fire,
And the men of war are terrified.

And as soon as you finish reading this scroll, you shall tie a stone to it and throw it into the middle of the Euphrates.