Jeremiah 13:1-5: in context

This is one of Jeremiah's sign-acts, where the prophet is told to do something strange and physical and the action itself becomes the message. It begins with a linen belt and no explanation at all. God says: go buy yourself a linen belt, put it around your waist, and do not put it in water. Jeremiah does it.

Then the word comes a second time, and the command gets stranger. Take the belt you are wearing, go to the Euphrates, and hide it there in a cleft of the rock. The Euphrates is a long way off, in the direction of Babylon, and burying a good linen belt in a wet crack of rock by a distant river makes no sense on its face. God still does not tell him why. The passage records only the obedience: so I went and hid it by the Euphrates, as the LORD commanded me. A linen belt is worn tight against the skin, the most intimate piece of clothing a man owns, and later, when Jeremiah digs it up ruined, the point becomes clear: a people who were meant to cling to God as a belt clings to the waist have rotted away from him. But none of that is spoken here.

What this passage actually shows is a man doing each odd step before he is given the point of any of it. Jeremiah buys, wears, travels, and hides, all on a word, and the understanding comes afterward if it comes at all. What clear but strange instruction have I been holding off on, because I wanted the whole meaning handed to me before I would take the first step?