2 Say to your brethren, 1‘My people,’ And to your sisters, 2‘Mercy is shown.’

God’s Unfaithful People

2 “Bring 3charges against your mother, 4bring charges;

For ashe is not My wife, nor am I her Husband!

Let her put away her bharlotries from her sight,

And her adulteries from between her breasts;

3 Lest cI strip her naked

And expose her, as in the day she was dborn,

And make her like a wilderness,

And set her like a dry land,

And slay her with ethirst.

4 “I will not have mercy on her children,

For they are the fchildren of harlotry.

5 For their mother has played the harlot;

She who conceived them has behaved shamefully.

For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers,

gWho give me my bread and my water,

My wool and my linen,

My oil and my drink.’

6 “Therefore, behold,

hI will hedge up your way with thorns,

And 5wall her in,

So that she cannot find her paths.

7 She will 6chase her lovers,

But not overtake them;

Yes, she will seek them, but not find them.

Then she will say,

i‘I will go and return to my jfirst husband,

For then it was better for me than now.’

8 For she did not kknow

That I gave her grain, new wine, and oil,

And multiplied her silver and gold—

Which they prepared for Baal.

9 “Therefore I will return and take away

My grain in its time

And My new wine in its season,

And will take back My wool and My linen,

Given to cover her nakedness.

10 Now lI will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers,

And no one shall deliver her from My hand.

11 mI will also cause all her mirth to cease,

Her feast days,

Her New Moons,

Her Sabbaths—

All her appointed feasts.

12 “And I will destroy her vines and her fig trees,

Of which she has said,

‘These are my wages that my lovers have given me.’

So I will make them a forest,

And the beasts of the field shall eat them.