Proclamation of wrongdoing
2 [a] Say to your brother, My People, and to your sister, Compassion:
2 Level a charge against your mother; plead with her!
She is not my wife,
and I am not her husband.
Let her remove prostitution from her presence,
and adultery from between her breasts,
3 or else I will strip her naked
and expose her as on the day she was born.
I will make her like a desert,
and turn her into a dry land,
and make her die of thirst.
4 I will also have no compassion on her children
because they are children of prostitution.
5 Their mother has played the prostitute;
she who conceived them has behaved shamefully.
She said, “I will seek out my lovers;
they give me my bread and my water,
my wool and my linen cloth, my oil and my drink.”
Divine correction
6 Therefore, I will line her path with thorns;
and I will build a wall against her,
so that she can’t find her paths.
7 She will go after her lovers,
but she won’t catch up with them;
she will seek them,
but she won’t find them.
Then she will say,
“I will return to my first husband,
for I had it better then than now.”
8 She didn’t know that I gave her
the corn, the new wine, and the fresh oil,
and that I gave her much silver,
and gold that they used for Baal.
9 So now I will take back
my corn in its time,
and my wine in its season;
and I will take away my wool and my linen cloth,
which were to cover her nakedness.
10 Now I will uncover her nakedness
in plain view of her lovers,
and no one will rescue her from me.
11 I will end all her religious celebrations,
her festivals, her new moons, her Sabbath days,
and all her sacred seasons.
12 I will destroy her vines and her fig trees,
of which she said,
“These are my pay,
which my lovers have given to me.”
I will change them into a forest,
and the wild animals will eat them.
13 I will punish her for the days dedicated to the Baals,
when she offered sweet-smelling sacrifices to them
and dressed herself up with rings and jewelry,
and went after her lovers,
and forgot me, says the Lord.
Promises: restoration and covenant love
14 Therefore, I will charm her,
and bring her into the desert,
and speak tenderly to her heart.
15 From there I will give her vineyards,
and make the Achor Valley a door of hope.
There she will respond to me as in the days of her youth,
like the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.
16 On that day, says the Lord, you will call me, “My husband,” and no longer will you call me, “My Lord.” 17 I will take away the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they will not be mentioned by name anymore. 18 On that day, I will make a covenant for them with the wild animals, the birds in the sky, and the creeping creatures of the fertile ground. I will do away with the bow, the sword, and war from the land; I will make you lie down in safety.
19 I will take you for my wife forever;
I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice,
in devoted love, and in mercy.
20 I will take you for my wife in faithfulness;
and you will know the Lord.
21 On that day I will answer, says the Lord.
I will answer the heavens
and they will answer the earth.
22 The earth will answer the corn, the new wine, and the fresh oil,
and they will answer Jezreel;
23 I will sow him for myself in the land;
and I will have compassion on No Compassion,
and I will say to Not My People, “You are my people”;
and he will say, “You are my God.”