Hosea 2
1
"Say of your brothers, `My people,' and of your sisters, `My loved one.'
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.
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.
4
I will not show my love to her children, because they are the children of adultery.
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 oil and my drink.'
6
Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.
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.'
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.
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 nakedness.
10
So now I will expose her lewdness before the eyes of her lovers; no one will take her out of my hands.
11
I will stop all her celebrations: her yearly festivals, her New Moons, her Sabbath days--all her appointed feasts.
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.
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.
14
"Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her.
15
There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor [1] a door of hope. There she will sing [2] as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt.
16
"In that day," declares the LORD, "you will call me `my husband'; you will no longer call me `my master. [3] '
17
I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips; no longer will their names be invoked.
18
In that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air 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.
19
I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in [4] righteousness and justice, in [5] love and compassion.
20
I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the LORD.
21
"In that day I will respond," declares the LORD-- "I will respond to the skies, and they will respond to the earth;
22
and the earth will respond to the grain, the new wine and oil, and they will respond to Jezreel. [6]
23
I will plant her for myself in the land; I will show my love to the one I called `Not my loved one. [7] ' I will say to those called `Not my people, [8] ' `You are my people'; and they will say, `You are my God.'"
  1. [15] Achor means trouble.
  2. [15] Or respond
  3. [16] Hebrew baal
  4. [19] Or with; also in verse 20
  5. [19] Or with
  6. [22] Jezreel means God plants.
  7. [23] Hebrew Lo-Ruhamah
  8. [23] Hebrew Lo-Ammi