Hosea 2
2:1 “Say of your brothers, ‘My people,’ and of your sisters, ‘My loved one.’
2:2 “Rebuke your mother, rebuke her,
- for she is not my wife,
- and I am not her husband.
Let her remove the adulterous look from her face
- and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.
2:3 Otherwise I will strip her naked
- and make her as bare as on the day she was born;
I will make her like a desert,
- turn her into a parched land,
- and slay her with thirst.
2:4 I will not show my love to her children,
- because they are the children of adultery.
2:5 Their mother has been unfaithful
- and has conceived them in disgrace.
She said, ‘I will go after my lovers,
- who give me my food and my water,
- my wool and my linen, my olive oil and my drink.’
2:6 Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes;
- I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.
2:7 She will chase after her lovers but not catch them;
- she will look for them but not find them.
Then she will say,
- ‘I will go back to my husband as at first,
- for then I was better off than now.’
2:8 She has not acknowledged that I was the one
- who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil,
who lavished on her the silver and gold—
- which they used for Baal.
2:9 “Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens,
- and my new wine when it is ready.
I will take back my wool and my linen,
- intended to cover her naked body.
2:10 So now I will expose her lewdness
- before the eyes of her lovers;
- no one will take her out of my hands.
2:11 I will stop all her celebrations:
- her yearly festivals, her New Moons,
- her Sabbath days—all her appointed festivals.
2:12 I will ruin her vines and her fig trees,
- which she said were her pay from her lovers;
I will make them a thicket,
- and wild animals will devour them.
2:13 I will punish her for the days
- she burned incense to the Baals;
she decked herself with rings and jewelry,
- and went after her lovers,
- but me she forgot,”
- declares the Lord.
- declares the Lord.
2:14“Therefore I am now going to allure her;
- I will lead her into the wilderness
- and speak tenderly to her.
2:15 There I will give her back her vineyards,
- and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
There she will respond as in the days of her youth,
- as in the day she came up out of Egypt.
2:16 “In that day,” declares the Lord,
- “you will call me ‘my husband’;
- you will no longer call me ‘my master.’
2:17 I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips;
- no longer will their names be invoked.
2:18 In that day I will make a covenant for them
- with the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky
- and the creatures that move along the ground.
Bow and sword and battle
- I will abolish from the land,
- so that all may lie down in safety.
2:19 I will betroth you to me forever;
- I will betroth you in righteousness and justice,
- in love and compassion.
2:20 I will betroth you in faithfulness,
- and you will acknowledge the Lord.
2:21 “In that day I will respond,”
- declares the Lord—
“I will respond to the skies,
- and they will respond to the earth;
2:22 and the earth will respond to the grain,
- the new wine and the olive oil,
- and they will respond to Jezreel.
2:23 I will plant her for myself in the land;
- I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one.’
I will say to those called ‘Not my people,’ ‘You are my people’;
- and they will say, ‘You are my God.’”