HoseaChapter 2
Tap any verse to comment or suggest a better wording.
1"Call your brothers 'My People.'
Call your sisters 'Loved One.' 2Speak against your mother.
Speak out against her!
For she is not my wife,
and I am not her husband.
Let her take the adultery off her face.
Let her take the unfaithfulness from between her breasts. 3If she does not, I will strip her naked.
I will leave her bare as on the day she was born.
I will make her like a desert.
I will turn her into a dry land.
I will let her die of thirst. 4I will have no mercy on her children,
because they are children of adultery. 5For their mother has been a prostitute.
She became pregnant with them in shame.
She said, 'I will chase after my lovers.
They give me my bread and water,
my wool and linen, my oil and drink.' 6So I will block her path with thorns.
I will build a wall around her,
so she cannot find her way. 7She will chase her lovers but not catch them.
She will look for them but not find them.
Then she will say,
'I will go back to my first husband.
I was better off then than now.' 8She does not admit that I was the one
who gave her grain, new wine, and oil.
I gave her plenty of silver and gold,
but they used it to make things for Baal. 9So I will take back my grain at harvest time
and my new wine in its season.
I will take away my wool and linen
that I gave to cover her naked body. 10Then I will uncover her shame
right in front of her lovers.
No one will rescue her from my hands. 11I will put an end to all her joy:
her feasts, New Moons, and Sabbaths—
all her appointed feasts. 12I will destroy her vines and fig trees.
She thinks they are the pay her lovers gave her.
I will turn them into a thicket,
and the wild animals will eat them up. 13I will punish her for the days of the Baals,
when she burned incense to them.
She put on her rings and jewelry
and went after her lovers.
But she forgot me," says the LORD. 14"So I will draw her to me.
I will lead her into the wilderness
and speak tenderly to her. 15There I will give her vineyards back to her.
I will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
There she will answer me as she did when she was young,
as on the day she came up out of Egypt.a 16"On that day," says the LORD,
"you will call me 'my Husband.'
You will no longer call me 'my Master.'b 17For I will take the names of the Baals from her lips.
No one will call on their names anymore. 18On that day I will make a covenant for them
with the wild animals and the birds in the sky
and the creatures that crawl on the ground.
I will remove bow and sword and battle from the land.
I will let them lie down in safety. 19I will make you my bride forever.
I will make you my bride with what is right and fair,
with faithful love and mercy. 20I will make you my bride with faithfulness,
and you will know the LORD." 21"On that day I will answer," says the LORD.
"I will answer the skies,
and the skies will answer the earth. 22The earth will answer the grain,
the new wine, and the oil.
And they will answer Jezreel.c 23I will plant her for myself in the land.
I will show mercy to 'No Mercy.'
I will say to 'Not My People,' 'You are my people.'
And they will say, 'You are my God.'"