⁹ ‘I, the Lord, tell you this: See what happened to your belt. Now I will destroy everything that the people of Judah and Jerusalem are proud of. ¹⁰ Those wicked people refuse to listen to my words. They do whatever they want to do. They are too proud to change. They serve other gods and they worship them. Now they will become as useless as this linen belt. ¹¹ I tell you this: My people should have been like a belt for me. I held all the people of Israel and all the people of Judah very near to me. I chose them to be my special people. They should have respected me and given me honour so that people would praise me. But they refused to obey me.