Hosea 2:1-13 ▼

1 Say to your brother, My people, and to your sister, Pitied.

2 Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband: and I will remove her fornication out of my presence, and her adultery from between her breasts:

3 that I may strip her naked, and make her again as she was at the day of her birth: and I will make her desolate, and make her as a dry land, and will kill her with thirst.

4 And I will not have mercy upon her children; for they are children of fornication.

5 And their mother went a-whoring: she that bore them disgraced them : for she said, I will go after my lovers, that give me my bread and my water, and my garments, and my linen clothes, my oil and my necessaries.

6 Therefore, behold, I hedge up her way with thorns, and I will stop the ways, and she shall not find her path.

7 And she shall follow after her lovers, and shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them: and she shall say, I will go, and return to my former husband; for it was better with me than now.

8 And she knew not that I gave her her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied silver to her: but she made silver and gold images for Baal.

9 Therefore I will return, and take away my corn in its season, and my wine in its time; and I will take away my raiment and my linen clothes, so that she shall not cover her nakedness.

10 And now I will expose her uncleanness before her lovers, and no one shall by any means deliver her out of my hand.

11 And I will take away all her gladness, her feasts, and her festivals at the new moon, and her sabbaths, and all her solemn assemblies.

12 And I will utterly destroy her vines, and her fig-trees, all things of which she said, These are my hire which my lovers have given me: and I will make them a testimony, and the wild beasts of the field, and the birds of the sky, and the reptiles of the earth shall devour them.

13 And I will recompense on her the days of Baalim, wherein she sacrificed to them, and put on her ear-rings, and her necklaces, and went after her lovers, and forgot me, saith the Lord.