Hosea
2 “SAY to YOUR brothers, ‘My people!’*+ and to YOUR sisters, ‘O woman shown mercy!’*+ 2 Carry on a legal case with YOUR mother;+ carry on a legal case, for she is not my wife*+ and I am not her husband.*+ And she should put away her fornication from before herself and her acts of adultery from between her breasts,+ 3 that I may not strip her naked+ and actually place her as in the day of her being born,+ and actually set her like a wilderness+ and place her like a waterless land+ and put her to death with thirst.+ 4 And to her sons I shall not show mercy,+ for they are the sons of fornication.+ 5 For their mother has committed fornication.+ She that was pregnant with them has acted shamefully,+ for she has said, ‘I want to go after those passionately loving me,+ those giving my bread and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.’+
6 “Therefore here I am hedging your way about with thorns; and I will heap up a stone wall against her,+ so that her own roadways she will not find.+ 7 And she will actually chase after her passionate lovers, but she will not overtake them;+ and she will certainly look for them, but she will not find [them]. And she will have to say, ‘I want to go and return to my husband,+ the first one,+ for I had it better at that time than now.’+ 8 But she herself did not recognize+ that it was I who had given to her the grain+ and the sweet wine and the oil, and that I had made silver itself abound for her, and gold, [which] they made use of for Baʹal.*+
9 “‘Therefore I shall turn back and certainly take away my grain in its time and my sweet wine in its season,+ and I will snatch away my wool and my linen for covering her nakedness.+ 10 And now I shall uncover her private parts to the eyes of her passionate lovers,+ and there will be no man* to snatch her out of my hand.+ 11 And I shall certainly cause all her exultation,+ her festival,+ her new moon+ and her sabbath and her every festal season to cease. 12 And I will lay desolate her vine+ and her fig tree,+ of which she has said: “They are a gift to me, which my passionate lovers have given to me”; and I will set them as a forest,+ and the wild beast of the field will certainly devour them. 13 And I will hold an accounting+ against her for the days of the Baʹal images*+ to which she kept making sacrificial smoke,+ when she kept decking herself with her ring and her ornament+ and kept going after her passionate lovers,+ and I was the one that she forgot,’+ is the utterance of Jehovah.
14 “‘Therefore here I am prevailing upon her, and I will cause her to go into the wilderness,+ and I will speak to her heart.+ 15 And I will give her her vineyards from then onward,+ and the low plain* of Aʹchor*+ as an entrance to hope; and she will certainly answer there as in the days of her youth+ and as in the day of her coming up out of the land of Egypt.+ 16 And it must occur in that day,’ is the utterance of Jehovah, ‘that you will call [me] My husband,* and you will no longer call me My owner.’*+
17 “‘And I will remove the names of the Baʹal images from her mouth,+ and they will no longer be remembered* by their name.+ 18 And for them I shall certainly conclude a covenant in that day in connection with the wild beast of the field+ and with the flying creature of the heavens and the creeping thing of the ground, and the bow and the sword and war I shall break out of the land,+ and I will make them lie down in security.+ 19 And I will engage you to me for time indefinite,+ and I will engage you to me in righteousness and in justice and in loving-kindness* and in mercies.+ 20 And I will engage you to me in faithfulness; and you will certainly know Jehovah.’*+
21 “‘And it must occur in that day that I shall answer,’ is the utterance of Jehovah, ‘I shall answer the heavens, and they, for their part, will answer the earth;+ 22 and the earth, for its part, will answer the grain+ and the sweet wine and the oil; and they, for their part, will answer Jezʹre·el [‘God will sow seed’].+ 23 And I shall certainly sow her like seed for me in the earth,+ and I will show mercy to her who was not shown mercy,*+ and I will say to those not my people:* “You are my people”;+ and they, for their part,* will say: “[You are] my God.”’”*+