In Jeremiah 13:3, the prophet Jeremiah is instructed by God to hide a linen belt in a crevice of a rock near the Euphrates River. This symbolic act of burying the belt and retrieving it later represents how God's people, who were once close to Him like a belt around His waist, have become ruined and marred by their disobedience and idolatry. The belt being buried and ruined signifies the consequences of their unfaithfulness, serving as a visual lesson of the impending judgment and exile that will come upon them due to their spiritual unfaithfulness.