The Unfaithful Wife
2 Say to your brother,[a] “Ammi,”[b]
and to your sister,[c] “Ruhamah.”[d]
2 Plead with your mother, plead—
because she is not my wife,
and I am not her husband.
Let her put away her whoring from before her,[e]
and her adultery from between her breasts.
3 Lest I strip her naked
and expose her like the day when she was born;
I will make her like the desert
and turn her into parched land;
I will kill her with thirst.
4 And I will not have pity on her children,
because they are children of whoredom.
5 Because their mother was unfaithful;[f]
she who conceived them has acted shamefully,
for she said:
“I will go after my lovers,
the ones who give me my bread, my water,
my wool, and my flax,
my oil, and my drink.”
6 Therefore, Look!
I am going to hedge her path[g] with thorns,[h]
and I will build a stone wall, a stone wall against her,
and she will not find her paths.
7 Then she will pursue her lovers,[i]
but she will not overtake them;
she will seek them and not find them;
and she will say, “I will go
and return to my first husband
because it was better for me then than now.”
8 But she did not know
that it was I who gave her
grain, new wine, and oil,
and who gave her silver in abundance,
and gold which they made into a Baal.
9 Therefore I will take again
my grain in its time,
and my wine in its season;
and I will take away my wool and my flax,
which were to cover her nakedness.
10 And now I will uncover her nakedness
before the eyes of her lovers,
and no one will rescue her from my hand.
11 And I will put an end to all her mirth,
her festivals,[j] her new moons,[k] and her Sabbaths,[l]
and all her appointed festivals;[m]
12 and I will lay waste to her vines[n] and her fig trees,[o]
of which she said,
“They are my payment for prostitution,
which my lovers gave to me.”
I will make them a forest,
and the wild animals[p] of the field will devour them.
13 I will punish her[q] for the days of the Baals,
to whom she burns incense,
and she decked herself with her ornamental ring and jewelry,
and she went after her lovers, and forgot me
—a declaration of Yahweh.
14 Therefore, Look! I am going to allure her
and bring her into the desert,
and I will speak tenderly to her.[r]
15 From there I will give her
her vineyards,
and the Valley of Achor as a doorway of hope.
And there she will respond,
as in the days of her youth,
just as in the day of her coming out of
the land of Egypt.
16 And on that day—[s]
a declaration of Yahweh—
you will call me, “My husband;”[t]
you will no longer call me, “My Baal.”[u]
17 I will remove the names
of the Baals from her mouth,
and they will no longer be mentioned by their name.
18 I will make a covenant for them on that day,
with the animals[v] of the field,
with the birds[w] of the heaven, and
with the creeping things[x] of the ground;
the bow, the sword, and the war I will abolish from the land, and I will let them lie down in safety.
19 And I will take you as my wife forever;
I will take you as a wife for myself in righteousness and in justice,
in steadfast love and in mercy.
20 I will take you as my wife[y] in faithfulness,
and you will know Yahweh.
21 On that day I will answer, declares Yahweh,[z]
I will answer the heavens,
and they will answer the earth.
22 And the earth will answer
the grain, the wine, and the oil,
and they will answer Jezreel.[aa]
23 I will sow her for myself in the land;
I will have pity on Lo-ruhama;[ab]
I will say to Lo-ammi,[ac]
“You are my people,”
and he himself will say, “you are my God.”
Footnotes
- Hosea 2:1 Hebrew “brothers”
- Hosea 2:1 Ammi means “My people”
- Hosea 2:1 Hebrew “sisters”
- Hosea 2:1 Ruhamah means “Pitied”
- Hosea 2:2 Literally “from her face”
- Hosea 2:5 Or “their mother played the whore”
- Hosea 2:6 Hebrew “your path”
- Hosea 2:6 Literally “with the thorns”
- Hosea 2:7 Literally “the ones who love her”
- Hosea 2:11 Hebrew “festival”
- Hosea 2:11 Hebrew “new moon”
- Hosea 2:11 Hebrew “Sabbath”
- Hosea 2:11 Hebrew “festival”
- Hosea 2:12 Hebrew “vine”
- Hosea 2:12 Hebrew “fig tree”
- Hosea 2:12 Hebrew “animal”
- Hosea 2:13 Literally “To visit sins upon her;” see 1:4
- Hosea 2:14 Literally “I will speak to her heart”
- Hosea 2:16 Literally, “And it will happen on that day”
- Hosea 2:16 Hebrew “Ishi”
- Hosea 2:16 Hebrew “Baali”
- Hosea 2:18 Hebrew “animal”
- Hosea 2:18 Hebrew “bird”
- Hosea 2:18 Hebrew “creeping thing”
- Hosea 2:20 Literally “I will take you as a wife to me”
- Hosea 2:21 Literally “a declaration of Yahweh
- Hosea 2:22 Jezreel means “God sows”
- Hosea 2:23 Lo-ruhama means “Not pitied”
- Hosea 2:23 Lo-ammi means “Not my people”