1. This is what the Lord said to me: ‘Go and buy a linen belt and put it round your waist, but do not let it touch water.’
2. So I bought a belt, as the Lord directed, and put it round my waist.
3. Then the word of the Lord came to me a second time:
4. ‘Take the belt you bought and are wearing round your waist, and go now to Perath and hide it there in a crevice in the rocks.’
5. So I went and hid it at Perath, as the Lord told me.
6. Many days later the Lord said to me, ‘Go now to Perath and get the belt I told you to hide there.’
7. So I went to Perath and dug up the belt and took it from the place where I had hidden it, but now it was ruined and completely useless.