Hosea 2
1 The number of the Israelites will be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or counted. In the place where they were told, “You are not my people,” they will be told, “Children of the living God.”
2 The people of Judah and the people of Israel will gather together. They will appoint one head for themselves and come up from the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel.
3 Say to your brothers, “My people,” and to your sisters, “Shown compassion.”
4 Bring a charge against your mother, bring a charge, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband. Let her remove her acts of prostitution from her face and her adulteries from between her breasts.
5 Otherwise, I will strip her naked and expose her as she was on the day she was born. I will make her like a wilderness, leave her like dry land, and kill her with thirst.
6 I will have no compassion on her children, because they are children of prostitution.
7 Their mother has prostituted herself; the one who conceived them has acted shamefully. She said, “I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drinks.”
8 So I will block her road with thorns; I will build a wall against her, and she will not find her paths.
9 She will chase after her lovers but will not catch up with them; she will search for them but will not find them. Then she will say, “I will go back to my first husband, for I was better off then than I am now.”
10 She did not recognize that it was I who gave her grain, new wine, and oil. I multiplied her silver and gold, which they used for Baal.
11 So I will return and take back my grain at its proper time and my new wine in its season. I will take away my wool and flax, which she used to cover her nakedness.
12 Now I will expose her shame before the eyes of her lovers, and no one will rescue her from my hand.
13 I will put an end to all her celebration: her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths, and all her appointed times.
14 I will devastate her vines and her fig trees, of which she said, “These are my payment, which my lovers gave me.” I will turn them into a thicket, and the wild animals will eat them.
15 I will punish her for the days of the Baals, when she burned incense to them, adorned herself with her ring and necklace, and went after her lovers, while she forgot me, declares the LORD.
16 So I will draw her to me, lead her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.
17 From there I will give her back her vineyards, and the Valley of Achor as a door of hope. There she will answer as in the days of her youth, as on the day she came up from the land of Egypt.
18 On that day, declares the LORD, you will call me “My husband,” and you will no longer call me “My Baal.”
19 I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they will no longer be remembered by name.
20 On that day I will make a covenant for them with the wild animals, the birds of the sky, and the creatures that crawl on the ground. I will break bow, sword, and war in the land, and I will let them lie down in safety.
21 I will take you as my bride forever; I will take you as my bride in righteousness and justice, in steadfast love and compassion.
22 I will take you as my bride in faithfulness, and you will know the LORD.
23 On that day, declares the LORD, I will answer. I will answer the heavens, and they will answer the earth.
24 The earth will answer the grain, the new wine, and the oil, and they will answer Jezreel.
25 I will sow her for myself in the land. I will have compassion on Lo-Ruhamah, and I will say to Lo-Ammi, “You are my people,” and he will say, “My God.”
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