¹ Thus says Yahweh to me, Go, and buy you a linen belt, and put it on your loins, and don't put it in water.

¹¹ For as the belt cleaves to the loins of a man, so have I caused to cleave to me the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah, says Yahweh; that they may be to me for a people, and for a name, and for a praise, and for a glory: but they would not hear.

¹ Thus said Yahweh, Go, and buy a potter's earthen bottle, and [take] of the elders of the people, and of the elders of the priests;

² Thus says Yahweh to me: Make you bonds and bars, and put them on your neck;

¹ You also, son of man, take a tile, and lay it before you, and portray on it a city, even Jerusalem:

² and lay siege against it, and build forts against it, and cast up a mound against it; set camps also against it, and plant battering rams against it round about.

³ Take for yourself an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between you and the city: and set your face toward it, and it shall be besieged, and you shall lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel.

⁴ Moreover lie you on your left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel on it; [according to] the number of the days that you shall lie on it, you shall bear their iniquity.

⁵ For I have appointed the years of their iniquity to be to you a number of days, even three hundred ninety days: so shall you bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.

¹ God, having in the past spoken to the fathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways,