Israel’s Unfaithfulness Punished
Say to your brothers, a“You are my people,” and to your sisters, b“You have received mercy.”
2 “Plead with your mother, plead—
for ashe is not my wife,
and I am not her husband—
that she put away bher whoring from her face,
and her adultery from between her breasts;
3 lest aI strip her naked
and make her as bin the day she was born,
and cmake her like a wilderness,
and make her like a parched land,
and kill her with thirst.
4 aUpon her children also I will have no mercy,
bbecause they are children of whoredom.
5 For atheir mother has played the whore;
she who conceived them has acted shamefully.
For bshe said, ‘I will go after my lovers,
who cgive me my bread and my water,
my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’
6 Therefore aI will hedge up her way with thorns,
and bI will build a wall against her,
so that she cannot find her paths.
7 She shall pursue her lovers
but not overtake them,
and she shall seek them
but shall not find them.
aThen she shall say,
‘I will go and return to bmy first husband,
afor it was better for me then than now.’
8 And ashe did not know
that it was bI who gave her
cthe grain, the wine, and the oil,
and who lavished on dher silver and gold,
ewhich they used for Baal.
9 Therefore aI will take back
my grain in its time,
and my wine in its season,
and aI will take away my wool and my flax,
which were to cover her nakedness.
10 Now aI will uncover her lewdness
in the sight of her lovers,
and no one shall rescue her out of my hand.
11 aAnd I will put an end to all her mirth,
her feasts, her bnew moons, her bSabbaths,
and all her cappointed feasts.
12 And aI will lay waste her vines and her fig trees,
bof which she said,
‘These are cmy wages,
which my lovers have given me.’
I will make them a forest,
dand the beasts of the field shall devour them.
13 And aI will punish her for bthe feast days of the Baals
when she burned offerings to them
and cadorned herself with her ring and jewelry,
and went after her lovers
and forgot me, declares the Lord.
The Lord’s Mercy on Israel
14 “Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
and abring her into the wilderness,
and bspeak tenderly to her.
15 And there I will give her her vineyards
and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
And there she shall answer aas in the days of her youth,
as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.
16 “And ain that day, declares the Lord, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.’ 17 For aI will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. 18 And aI will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground. And bI will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in csafety. 19 And I will betroth you to me aforever. bI will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. 20 aI will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And byou shall know the Lord.
21 “And ain that day bI will answer, declares the Lord,
I will answer the heavens,
and they shall answer the earth,
22 and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil,
and they shall answer aJezreel,
23 and aI will sow her for myself in the land.
And bI cwill have mercy on No Mercy,
and dI will say to Not My People, e‘You are my people’;
and he shall say, ‘You are my God.’”