Hosea, Chapter 2

1. Say to your brothers, Ammi; and to your sisters, Ruhamah.    2. Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband: let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts;    3. So that I do not strip her naked, and leave her as in the day that she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and make her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst.    4. And I will not have mercy upon her children; for they are the children of whoredoms.    5. For their mother has played the harlot: 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 make a wall, that she shall not find her paths.    7. And she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them: then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now.    8. For she did not know that I gave her grain, and wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which they prepared for Baal.    9. Therefore will I return, and take away my grain in the time thereof, and my wine in the season thereof, and will recover my wool and my flax given to cover her nakedness.    10. And now will I uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and none shall deliver her out of my hand.    11. I will also cause all her gladness to cease, her feast days, her new moons, and her sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts.    12. And I will destroy her vines and her fig trees, of which she has said, These are my rewards that my lovers have given me: and I will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall eat them.    13. And I will visit upon her the days of Baalim, in which she burned incense to them, and she adorned herself with her earrings and her jewels, and she 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 encouragingly to her.    15. And I will give her her vineyards from there, and the valley of Achor as a door of hope: and she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt.    16. And it shall be at that day, says the LORD, that you shall call me Ishi; and shall call me no more Baali.    17. For I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth, and they shall no more be remembered by their name.    18. And in that day will I make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, and with the birds of heaven, and with the creeping things of the ground: and I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth, and will make them to lie down safely.    19. And I will betroth you to me for ever; yea, I will betroth you to me in righteousness, and in justice, and in loving kindness, and in mercies.    20. I will even betroth you to me in faithfulness: and you shall know the LORD.    21. And it shall come to pass in that day, I will hear, says the LORD, I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth;    22. And the earth shall hear the grain, and the wine, and the oil; and they shall hear Jezreel.    23. And I will sow her for myself in the earth; and I will have mercy upon her who had not obtained mercy; and I will say to those who were not my people, You are my people; and they shall say, You are my God.