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14 Thus says the Lord concerning all my evil neighbours who touch the heritage that I have given my people Israel to inherit: I am about to pluck them up from their land, and I will pluck up the house of Judah from among them. ¹⁵And after I have plucked them up, I will again have compassion on them, and I will bring them again to their heritage and to their land, every one of them. ¹⁶And then, if they will diligently learn the ways of my people, to swear by my name, ‘As the Lord lives’, as they taught my people to swear by Baal, then they shall be built up in the midst of my people. ¹⁷But if any nation will not listen, then I will completely uproot it and destroy it, says the Lord.

The Linen Loincloth

13Thus said the Lord to me, ‘Go and buy yourself a linen loincloth, and put it on your loins, but do not dip it in water.’ ²So I bought a loincloth according to the word of the Lord, and put it on my loins. ³And the word of the Lord came to me a second time, saying, ⁴‘Take the loincloth that you bought and are wearing, and go now to the Euphrates,^* and hide it there in a cleft of the rock.’ ⁵So I went, and hid it by the Euphrates,^* as the Lord commanded me. ⁶And after many days the Lord said to me, ‘Go now to the Euphrates,^* and take from there the loincloth that I commanded you to hide there.’ ⁷Then I went to the Euphrates,^* and dug, and I took the loincloth from the place where I had hidden it. But now the loincloth was ruined; it was good for nothing.

8 Then the word of the Lord came to me: ⁹Thus says the Lord: Just so I will ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. ¹⁰This evil people, who refuse to hear my words, who stubbornly follow their own will and have gone after other gods to serve them and worship them, shall be like this loincloth, which is good for nothing. ¹¹For as the loincloth clings to one’s loins, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the Lord, in order that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory. But they would not listen.