Hosea 2:1-23 - The Unfaithful Wife

¹ Say ye to your brothers, Ammi, and to your sisters, Ruhamah.

² Contend with your mother. Contend, for she is not my wife, nor am I her husband. And let her put away her whoredoms from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts, ³ lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born, and make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and kill her with thirst. ⁴ Yea, I will have no mercy upon her sons, for they are sons of whoredom, 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 thy way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, 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 she shall say, I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better with me then than now. ⁸ For she did not know that I gave her the grain, and the new wine, and the oil, and multiplied to her silver and gold, which they used for Baal. ⁹ Therefore I will take back my grain in the time of it, and my new wine in the season of it, and will pluck away my wool and my flax which should have covered her nakedness. ¹⁰ And now I will 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 mirth to cease, her feasts, her new moons, and her Sabbaths, and all her solemn assemblies. ¹² And I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees, of which she has said, These are my hire 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 the Baalim, to which she burned incense when she decked herself with her earrings and her jewels, and went after her lovers, and forgot me, says LORD.

¹⁴ Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak soothingly to her. ¹⁵ And I will give her her vineyards from there, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope. And she shall make answer 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 LORD, that thou shall call me Ishi, and shall no more call me Baali. ¹⁷ For I will take away the names of the Baalim out of her mouth, and they shall no more be mentioned by their name. ¹⁸ And in that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, and with the birds of the heavens, and with the creeping things of the ground. And I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the land, and ¹⁹ And I will betroth thee to me forever. Yea, I will betroth thee to me in righteousness, and in justice, and in loving kindness, and in mercies. ²⁰ I will even betroth thee to me in faithfulness, and thou shall know LORD. ²¹ And it shall come to pass in that day, I will answer, says LORD. I will answer the heavens, and they shall answer the earth, ²² and the earth shall answer the grain, and the new wine, and the oil, and they shall answer Jezreel. ²³ And I will sow her to me 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, Thou are my people, and they shall say, My God.