2
1 “Say
to your brothers,
‘My people!’
and to
your sisters, ‘My loved
one!’
2 Contend 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;
3 lest 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.
4 Indeed,
on her children I
will have no mercy,
for they
are children of unfaithfulness.
5 For
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.’
6 Therefore
behold,
I will hedge up
your way with thorns,
and I will build
a wall against her,
that she can’t
find her way.
7 She
will follow after
her lovers,
but she won’t overtake
them;
and she will seek
them,
but won’t find
them.
Then she will say,
‘I will go
and return to
my first husband,
for then it
was better with me
than now.’
8 For
she didn’t 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.
9 Therefore
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.
10 Now
I will uncover
her lewdness in
the sight of
her lovers,
and no one
will deliver her
out of my
hand.
11 I
will also cause
all her celebrations
to cease:
her feasts, her
new moons, her Sabbaths,
and all her
solemn assemblies.
12 I
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.
13 I
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
the LORD.
14 “Therefore behold,
I will allure her,
and bring her
into the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to
her.
15 I
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.
16 It
will be in
that day,” says
the LORD,
“that you
will call me ‘my
husband,’
and no longer call
me ‘my master.’
17 For
I will take
away the names of
the Baals out of
her mouth,
and they will
no longer be
mentioned by name.
18 In
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.
19 I
will betroth you
to me forever.
Yes, I will betroth
you to me
in righteousness, in justice,
in loving kindness, and
in compassion.
20 I
will even betroth you
to me
in faithfulness;
and you shall know
the LORD.
21 It
will happen in
that day, that I
will respond,” says the
LORD.
“I will respond to
the heavens,
and they will respond
to the earth;
22 and
the earth will respond
to the grain, and
the new wine, and
the oil;
and they
will respond to Jezreel.
23 I
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;’
and they will say,
‘You are My
God!’ ”