Hosea 1:10-2:20
10 Yet the number of the people of Israel will be like the sand of the sea, which can be neither measured nor numbered; and in the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” it will be said to them, “Children of the living God.” 11 The people of Judah and the people of Israel will be gathered together, and they will choose one head. They will become fruitful in the land. The day will be a wonderful one for Jezreel.
2 Say to your brother, My People, and to your sister, Compassion:
2 Level a charge against your mother; plead with her!
She is not my wife,
and I am not her husband.
Let her remove prostitution from her presence,
and adultery from between her
breasts,
3 or else I will strip her naked
and expose her as on the day
she was born.
I will make her like a desert,
and turn her into a dry land,
and make her die of thirst.
4 I will also have no compassion on her children
because they are children of
prostitution.
5 Their mother has played the prostitute;
she who conceived them has
behaved shamefully.
She said, “I will seek out my lovers;
they give me my bread and my
water,
my wool and my linen cloth, my
oil and my drink.”
6 Therefore, I will line her path with thorns;
and I will build a wall against
her,
so that she can’t find her
paths.
7 She will go after her lovers,
but she won’t catch up with
them;
she will seek them,
but she won’t find them.
Then she will say,
“I will return to my first
husband,
for I had it better then than
now.”
8 She didn’t know that I gave her
the corn, the new wine, and the
fresh oil,
and that I gave her much silver,
and gold that they used for
Baal.
9 So now I will take back
my corn in its time,
and my wine in its season;
and I will take away my wool and my linen cloth,
which were to cover her
nakedness.
10 Now I will uncover her nakedness
in plain view of her lovers,
and no one will rescue her from
me.
11 I will end all her religious celebrations,
her festivals, her new moons,
her Sabbath days,
and all her sacred seasons.
12 I will destroy her vines and her fig trees,
of which she said,
“These are my pay,
which my lovers have given to
me.”
I will change them into a forest,
and the wild animals will eat
them.
13 I will punish her for the days dedicated to the
Baals,
when she offered sweet-smelling
sacrifices to them
and dressed herself up with
rings and jewelry,
and went after her lovers,
and forgot me, says the Lord.
14 Therefore, I will charm her,
and bring her into the desert,
and speak tenderly to her
heart.
15 From there I will give her vineyards,
and make the Achor Valley a
door of hope.
There she will respond to me as in the days of her
youth,
like the time when she came out
of the land of Egypt.
16 On that day, says the Lord, you will call me, “My husband,” and no longer will you call me, “My Lord.” 17 I will take away the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they will not be mentioned by name anymore. 18 On that day, I will make a covenant for them with the wild animals, the birds in the sky, and the creeping creatures of the fertile ground. I will do away with the bow, the sword, and war from the land; I will make you lie down in safety.
19 I will take you for my wife forever;
I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in
justice,
in devoted love, and in mercy.
20 I will take you for my wife in faithfulness;
and you will know the Lord.
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