Hosea 2

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.

14 “Therefore, behold, I am enticing her, And have caused her to go to the wilderness, And I have spoken to her heart,

15 And given to her her vineyards from there, And the Valley of Achor for an opening of hope, And she has responded there as in the days of her youth, And as in the day of her coming up out of the land of Egypt.

16 And it has come to pass in that day,” A declaration of YHWH, “You call Me: My husband, And do not call Me anymore: My lord.

17 And I have turned aside the names of the lords from her mouth, And they are not remembered anymore by their name.

18 And I have made a covenant for them in that day, With the beast of the field, And with the bird of the heavens, And the creeping thing of the ground, And bow, and sword, and war I break from off the land, And have caused them to lie down confidently.

19 And I have betrothed you to Me for all time, And betrothed you to Me in righteousness, And in judgment, and kindness, and mercies,

20 And betrothed you to Me in faithfulness, And you have known YHWH.

21 And it has come to pass in that day, I answer,” A declaration of YHWH, “I answer the heavens, and they answer the earth.

22 And the earth answers the grain, And the new wine, and the oil, And they answer Jezreel.

23 And I have sowed her to Me in the land, And I have pitied Lo-Ruhamah, And I have said to Lo-Ammi, You [are] My people, And he says, My God!”