Hosea 2:1-9 ▼

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.