Hosea 2:1-23
2 “Say to your brothers, ‘My people!’*+
And to your sisters, ‘O woman shown mercy!’*+
2 Accuse your mother; accuse her,For she is not my wife+ and I am not her husband.
She should remove her prostitution* from herselfAnd her adultery from between her breasts,
3 Or I will strip her naked and make her as in the day she was born,Making her like a wilderness,Reducing her to a waterless land,And causing her to die of thirst.
4 And to her sons I will not show mercy,For they are the sons of prostitution.*
5 For their mother has committed prostitution.*+
She who was pregnant with them has acted shamefully,+ for she said,‘I will go after my passionate lovers,+Those who give me my bread and my water,My wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.’
6 So I will block your way with a hedge of thorns;And I will raise up a stone wall against her,So that she cannot find her paths.
7 She will chase after her passionate lovers, but she will not overtake them;+She will look for them, but she will not find them.
Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my first husband,+For I was better off at that time than I am now.’+
8 She did not recognize that it was I who had given her the grain,+ the new wine, and the oil,And I who had given her silver in abundanceAnd gold, which they used for Baʹal.+
9 ‘Therefore, I will return and take away my grain in its timeAnd my new wine in its season,+And I will snatch away my wool and my linen that were to cover her nakedness.
10 Now I will expose her private parts in full view of her passionate lovers,And no man will rescue her out of my hand.+
11 I will put an end to all her joy,Her festivals,+ her new moons, her sabbaths, and all her festive seasons.
12 And I will ruin her vines and her fig trees, of which she has said:
“These are my wages, which my passionate lovers gave to me”;I will turn them into a forest,And the wild animals of the field will devour them.
13 I will hold an accounting against her for the days when she offered sacrifices to the Baʹal images,+When she would adorn herself with her rings and ornaments and would chase after her passionate lovers,And I was the one she forgot,’+ declares Jehovah.
14 ‘So I will persuade her,I will lead her into the wilderness,And I will speak to win her heart.
15 I will give her vineyards back to her from that time onward,+And the Valley* of Aʹchor+ as a gateway to hope;She will answer there as in the days of her youth,As in the day when she came out of the land of Egypt.+
16 And in that day,’ declares Jehovah,‘You will call me My husband, and you will no longer call me My master.’*
17 ‘I will remove the names of the Baʹal images from her mouth,+And they will no longer be remembered by their name.+
18 In that day I will make a covenant for them with the wild animals of the field,+And with the birds of the heavens and the creeping things of the ground;+I will rid the land of the bow and the sword and war,+And I will make them lie down* in security.+
19 I will engage myself to you forever;And I will engage myself to you in righteousness and in justice,In loyal love and in mercy.+
20 I will engage myself to you in faithfulness,And you will certainly know Jehovah.’+
21 ‘In that day I will answer,’ declares Jehovah,‘I will answer the heavens,And they will answer the earth;+
22 And the earth will answer the grain and the new wine and the oil;And they will answer Jezʹre·el.*+
23 I will sow her like seed for myself in the earth,+And I will show mercy to her who was not shown mercy;*I will say to those not my people:* “You are my people,”+
And they will say: “You are my God.”’”+
Footnotes
^ Or “immorality; promiscuity.”
^ Or “immorality; promiscuity.”
^ Or “engaged in immorality (promiscuity).”
^ Or “Low Plain.”
^ Or “My Baal.”
^ Or “let them live.”
^ Meaning “God Will Sow Seed.”