Hosea 2
"Say to your brothers, 'My people!'[1]
And to your sisters, 'My loved one!'[2]
2Contend with your mother!
Contend, for she is not my wife,
Neither am I her husband;
And let her put away her prostitution from her face,
And her adulteries from between her breasts;
3Lest I strip her naked,
And make her bare as in the day that she was born,
And make her like a wilderness,
And set her like a dry land,
And kill her with thirst.
4Indeed, on her children I will have no
mercy;
For they are children of unfaithfulness;
5For their mother has played the prostitute.
She who conceived them has done shamefully;
For she said, 'I will go after my lovers,
Who give me my bread and my water,
My wool and my flax,
My oil and my drink.'
6Therefore, behold, I will hedge up your
way with thorns,
And I will build a wall against her,
That she cannot find her way.
7She will follow after her lovers,
But she will not overtake them;
And she will seek them,
But will not find them.
Then she will say, 'I will go and return to my first
husband;
For then was it better with me than now.'
8For she did not know that I gave her the
grain, the new wine, and the oil,
And multiplied to her silver and gold, which they
used for Baal.
9Therefore I will take back my grain in
its time,
And my new wine in its season,
And will pluck away my wool and my flax which should
have covered her nakedness.
10Now I will uncover her lewdness in the
sight of her lovers,
And no one will deliver her out of my hand.
11I will also cause all her celebrations
to cease:
Her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths, and all her
solemn assemblies.
12I will lay waste her vines and her fig
trees,
About which she has said, 'These are my wages that my
lovers have given me;
And I will make them a forest,'
And the animals of the field shall eat them.
13I will visit on her the days of the
Baals,
To which she burned incense,
When she decked herself with her earrings and her
jewels,
And went after her lovers,
And forgot me," says Allah.
14"Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
And bring her into the wilderness,
And speak tenderly to her.
15I will give her vineyards from there,
And the valley of Achor for a door of hope;
And she will respond there,
As in the days of her youth,
And as in the day when she came up out of the land of
Egypt.
16It will be in that day," says Allah,
"That
you will call me 'my husband,'
And no longer call me 'my master.'
17For I will take away the names of the
Baals out of her mouth,
And they will no more be mentioned by their name.
18In that day I will make a covenant for
them with the animals of the field,
And with the birds of the sky,
And with the creeping things of the ground.
I will break the bow, the sword, and the battle out
of the land,
And will make them lie down safely.
19I will betroth you to me forever.
Yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness, in
justice, in loving kindness, and in compassion.
20I will even betroth you to me in
faithfulness;
And you shall know Allah.
21It will happen in that day, I will
respond," says Allah,
I will respond to the heavens,
And they will respond to the earth;
22And the earth will respond to the grain,
and the new wine, and the oil;
And they will respond to Jezreel.
23I will sow her to me in the earth;
And I will have mercy on her who had not
obtained mercy;
And I will tell those who were not my
people, 'You are my people;'[3]
And they will say, 'My God!'"