Hosea 2:1-22 ▼

1 Then you will call your brother, |My People| (Ammi)! You will call your sister, |Pity| (Ruhamah)!

2 Plead earnestly with your mother (for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband), so that she might put an end to her adulterous lifestyle, and turn away from her sexually immoral behavior.

3 Otherwise, I will strip her naked, and expose her like she was when she was born. I will turn her land into a wilderness and make her country a parched land, so that I might kill her with thirst.

4 I will have no pity on her children, because they are children conceived in adultery.

5 For their mother has committed adultery; she who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, |I will seek out my lovers; they are the ones who give me my bread and my water, my wool, my flax, my olive oil, and my wine.

6 Therefore, I will soon fence her in with thorns; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.

7 Then she will pursue her lovers, but she will not catch them; she will seek them, but she will not find them. Then she will say, |I will go back to my husband, because I was better off then than I am now.|

8 Yet until now she has refused to acknowledge that I was the one who gave her the grain, the new wine, and the olive oil; and that it was I who lavished on her the silver and gold--which they used in worshiping Baal!

9 Therefore, I will take back my grain during the harvest time and my new wine when it ripens; I will take away my wool and my flax which I had provided in order to clothe her.

10 Soon I will expose her lewd nakedness in front of her lovers, and no one will be able to rescue her from me!

11 I will put an end to all her celebration: her annual religious festivals, monthly new moon celebrations, and weekly Sabbath festivities--all her appointed festivals.

12 I will destroy her vines and fig trees, about which she said, |These are my wages for prostitution that my lovers gave to me!| I will turn her cultivated vines and fig trees into an uncultivated thicket, so that wild animals will devour them.

13 I will punish her for the festival days when she burned incense to the Baal idols; she adorned herself with earrings and jewelry, and went after her lovers, but she forgot me!| says the LORD.

14 However, in the future I will allure her; I will lead her back into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.

15 From there I will give back her vineyards to her, and turn the |Valley of Trouble| into an |Opportunity for Hope.| There she will sing as she did when she was young, when she came up from the land of Egypt.

16 At that time,| declares the LORD, |you will call, 'My husband'; you will never again call me, 'My master.'

17 For I will remove the names of the Baal idols from your lips, so that you will never again utter their names!|

18 At that time I will make a covenant for them with the wild animals, the birds of the air, and the creatures that crawl on the ground. I will abolish the warrior's bow and sword--that is, every weapon of warfare--from the land, and I will allow them to live securely.|

19 I will commit myself to you forever; I will commit myself to you in righteousness and justice, in steadfast love and tender compassion.

20 I will commit myself to you in faithfulness; then you will acknowledge the LORD.|

21 At that time, I will willingly respond,| declares the LORD. |I will respond to the sky, and the sky will respond to the ground;

22 then the ground will respond to the grain, the new wine, and the olive oil; and they will respond to 'God Plants' (Jezreel)!