When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of harlotry; for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the Lord.”

And the sons of Judah and the sons of Israel will be gathered together,
And they will appoint for themselves one leader,
And they will go up from the land,
For great will be the day of Jezreel.

Or I will strip her naked
And expose her as on the day when she was born.
I will also make her like a wilderness,
Make her like desert land
And slay her with thirst.

“Then I will give her her vineyards from there,
And the valley of Achor as a door of hope.
And she will sing there as in the days of her youth,
As in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt.

“In that day I will also make a covenant for them
With the beasts of the field,
The birds of the sky
And the creeping things of the ground.
And I will abolish the bow, the sword and war from the land,
And will make them lie down in safety.

“I will sow her for Myself in the land.
I will also have compassion on her who had not obtained compassion,
And I will say to those who were not My people,
‘You are My people!’
And they will say, ‘You are my God!’”

Listen to the word of the Lord, O sons of Israel,
For the Lord has a case against the inhabitants of the land,
Because there is no faithfulness or kindness
Or knowledge of God in the land.

Therefore the land mourns,
And everyone who lives in it languishes
Along with the beasts of the field and the birds of the sky,
And also the fish of the sea disappear.

They have dealt treacherously against the Lord,
For they have borne illegitimate children.
Now the new moon will devour them with their land.

They turn, but not upward,
They are like a deceitful bow;
Their princes will fall by the sword
Because of the insolence of their tongue.
This will be their derision in the land of Egypt.

They will not remain in the Lord’s land,
But Ephraim will return to Egypt,
And in Assyria they will eat unclean food.

Israel is a luxuriant vine;
He produces fruit for himself.
The more his fruit,
The more altars he made;
The richer his land,
The better he made the sacred pillars.

They will not return to the land of Egypt;
But Assyria—he will be their king
Because they refused to return to Me.

They will come trembling like birds from Egypt
And like doves from the land of Assyria;
And I will settle them in their houses, declares the Lord.

But I have been the Lord your God since the land of Egypt;
I will make you live in tents again,
As in the days of the appointed festival.

Now Jacob fled to the land of Aram,
And Israel worked for a wife,
And for a wife he kept sheep.

Yet I have been the Lord your God
Since the land of Egypt;
And you were not to know any god except Me,
For there is no savior besides Me.

I cared for you in the wilderness,
In the land of drought.