Hosea 2

¹ Protest against your mother, protest! for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband. Let her remove her harlotry from before her, her adultery from between her breasts,

² Or I will strip her naked, leaving her as on the day of her birth; I will make her like the desert, reduce her to an arid land, and slay her with thirst.

³ I will have no pity on her children, for they are the children of harlotry.

⁴ Yes, their mother has played the harlot; she that conceived them has acted shamefully. "I will go after my lovers," she said, "who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink."

⁵ Since she has not known that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine, and the oil, And her abundance of silver, and of gold, which they used for Baal,

⁶ Therefore I will take back my grain in its time, and my wine in its season; I will snatch away my wool and my flax, with which she covers her nakedness.

⁷ So now I will lay bare her shame before the eyes of her lovers, and no one can deliver her out of my hand.

⁸ I will bring an end to all her joy, her feasts, her new moons, her sabbaths, and all her solemnities.

⁹ I will lay waste her vines and fig trees, of which she said, "These are the hire my lovers have given me"; I will turn them into rank growth and wild beasts shall devour them.

¹⁰ I will punish her for the days of the Baals, for whom she burnt incense While she decked herself out with her rings and her jewels, and, in going after her lovers, forgot me, says the LORD.

¹¹ Therefore, I will hedge in her way with thorns and erect a wall against her, so that she cannot find her paths.

¹² If she runs after her lovers, she shall not overtake them; if she looks for them she shall not find them. Then she shall say, "I will go back to my first husband, for it was better with me then than now."

¹³ So I will allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart.

¹⁴ From there I will give her the vineyards she had, and the valley of Achor as a door of hope. She shall respond there as in the days of her youth, when she came up from the land of Egypt.

¹⁵ On that day, says the LORD, She shall call me "My husband," and never again "My baal."

¹⁶ Then will I remove from her mouth the names of the Baals, so that they shall no longer be invoked.

¹⁷ I will make a covenant for them on that day, with the beasts of the field, With the birds of the air, and with the things that crawl on the ground. Bow and sword and war I will destroy from the land, and I will let them take their rest in security.

¹⁸ I will espouse you to me forever: I will espouse you in right and in justice, in love and in mercy;

¹⁹ I will espouse you in fidelity, and you shall know the LORD.

²⁰ On that day I will respond, says the LORD; I will respond to the heavens, and they shall respond to the earth;

²¹ The earth shall respond to the grain, and wine, and oil, and these shall respond to Jezreel.

²² I will sow him for myself in the land, and I will have pity on Lo-ruhama. I will say to Lo-ammi, "You are my people," and he shall say, "My God!"