Hosea
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 herself
And 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 abundance
And gold, which they used for Baʹal.+
9 ‘Therefore, I will return and take away my grain in its time
And 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.
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,+
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;
23 I will sow her like seed for myself in the earth,+
And I will show mercy to her who was not shown mercy;*
And they will say: “You are my God.”’”+