"Say to your brothers, 'My people.' and to your sisters, 'My loved one.'

She will follow after her lovers, but she won't overtake them; and she will seek them, but won't find them. Then she will say, 'I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now.'

I will visit on her the days of the Baals, to which she burned incense, when she decked herself with her earrings and her jewels, and went after her lovers, and forgot me," says the LORD.

It will be in that day," says the LORD, "that you will call me 'my husband,' and no longer call me 'my master.'

It will happen in that day, I will respond," says the LORD, "I will respond to the heavens, and they will respond to the earth;

I will sow her to me in the earth; and I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy; and I will tell those who were not my people, 'You are my people;' and they will say, 'My God.'"

Surely now they will say, "We have no king; for we do not fear the LORD; and the king, what can he do for us?"

They will come trembling like a bird out of Egypt, and like a dove out of the land of Assyria; and I will settle them in their houses," says the LORD.

Now they sin more and more, and have made themselves molten images of their silver, even idols according to their own understanding, all of them the work of the craftsmen. They say of them, 'They offer human sacrifice and kiss the calves.'

Assyria can't save us. We won't ride on horses; neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, 'Our gods.' for in you the fatherless finds mercy."