'Loins' in the Bible
But you [Jeremiah], gird up your loins [in preparation]! Get up and tell them all which I command you. Do not be distraught and break down at the sight of their [hostile] faces, or I will bewilder you before them and allow you to be overcome.
Thus the Lord said to me, “Go and buy yourself a linen waistband and put it on your loins, but do not put it in water.”
So I bought the waistband according to the word of the Lord and put it on my loins.
“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.”
For as the waistband clings to the body of a man, so I caused the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah to cling to Me,’ says the Lord, ‘that they might be for Me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory; but they did not listen and obey.’
‘Ask now, and seeWhether a man can give birth [to a child].Why then do I see every manWith his hands on his loins, as a woman in labor?Why have all faces turned pale?
For every head is [shaven] bald and every beard cut off; there are cuts (slashes) on all the hands and sackcloth on the loins [all expressions of mourning].