1 God told me, "Go and buy yourself some linen shorts. Put them on and keep them on. Don't even take them off to wash them." So I bought the shorts as God directed and put them on. 3 Then God told me, "Take the shorts that you bought and go straight to Perath and hide them there in a crack in the rock." So I did what God told me and hid them at Perath. 6 Next, after quite a long time, God told me, "Go back to Perath and get the linen shorts I told you to hide there." So I went back to Perath and dug them out of the place where I had hidden them. The shorts by then had rotted and were worthless.
8 God explained, "This is the way I am going to ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem - a wicked bunch of people who won't obey me, who do only what they want to do, who chase after all kinds of no-gods and worship them. They're going to turn out as rotten as these old shorts. Just as shorts clothe and protect, so I kept the whole family of Israel under my care" - God's Decree - "so that everyone could see they were my people, a people I could show off to the world and be proud of. But they refused to do a thing I said.