Hosea 2:1-13 ▼

1 “Say to your brothers—Ammi, || And to your sisters—Ruhamah.

2 Plead with your mother—plead || (For she [is] not My wife, and I [am] not her husband), || And she turns her whoredoms from before her, || And her adulteries from between her breasts,

3 Lest I strip her naked. And have set her up as [in] the day of her birth, || And have made her as a wilderness, || And have set her as a dry land, || And have put her to death with thirst.

4 And her sons I do not pity, || For they [are] sons of whoredoms,

5 For their mother has gone whoring, || Their conceiver has acted shamefully, || For she has said, I go after my lovers, || Those giving my bread and my water, || My wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.

6 Therefore, behold, I am hedging up your way with thorns, || And I have made a wall for her, || And her paths she does not find.

7 And she has pursued her lovers, || And she does not overtake them, || And has sought them, and does not find [them], || And she has said: I go, and I return to my first husband, || For—better to me then than now.

8 And she did not know that I had given to her || The grain, and the new wine, and the oil. Indeed, I multiplied silver to her, || And the gold they prepared for Ba‘al.

9 Therefore I return, || And I have taken My grain in its season, || And My new wine in its appointed time, || And I have taken away My wool and My flax, covering her nakedness.

10 And now I reveal her dishonor before the eyes of her lovers, || And none deliver her out of My hand.

11 And I have caused all her joy to cease, || Her festival, her new moon, and her Sabbath, || Even all her appointed times,

12 And made desolate her vine and her fig tree, || Of which she said, They [are] a wage to me, || That my lovers have given to me, || And I have made them for a forest, || And a beast of the field has consumed them.

13 And I have charged on her the days of the Ba‘alim, || To whom she makes incense, || And puts on her ring and her ornament, || And goes after her lovers, || And forgot Me,” a declaration of YHWH.