Hosea 2:1–13

^2fSay to your brothers, “Ammi,”^g and to your sisters, “Ruhamah.”^h

Israel’s Infidelity, Punishment, and Redemption

²Plead with your mother, plead—

for she is not my wife,

and I am not her husband—

that she put away her prostitution from her face

and her adultery from between her breasts,^*

³or I will strip her naked

and expose her as in the day she was born

and make her like a wilderness

and turn her into a parched land

and kill her with thirst.^*

⁴Upon her children also I will have no pity,

because they are children of prostitution.^*

⁵For their mother has prostituted herself;

she who conceived them has acted shamefully.

For she said, “I will go after my lovers;

they give me my bread and my water,

my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.”^*

⁶Therefore I will hedge up herⁱ way with thorns,

and I will build a wall against her

so that she cannot find her paths.^*

⁷She shall pursue her lovers

but not overtake them,

and she shall seek them

but shall not find them.

Then she shall say, “I will go

and return to my first husband,

for it was better with me then than now.”^*

⁸She did not know

that it was I who gave her

the grain, the wine, and the oil

and who lavished upon her silver

and gold that they used for Baal.^*

⁹Therefore I will take back

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.

¹⁰Now I will uncover her shame

in the sight of her lovers,

and no one shall rescue her out of my hand.^*

¹¹I will put an end to all her mirth,

her festivals, her new moons, her Sabbaths,

and all her appointed festivals.^*

¹²I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees,

of which she said,

“These are my pay,

which my lovers have given me.”

I will make them a forest,

and the wild animals shall devour them.^*

¹³I will punish her for the festival days of the Baals,

to whom she offered incense

and decked herself with her rings and jewelry

and went after her lovers

and forgot me, says the Lord.^*