Hosea

¹ Rename your sisters 'All Mercy.'

² She's no longer my wife. I'm no longer her husband. Tell her to quit dressing like a whore, displaying her breasts for sale.

³ and expose her, naked as a newborn. I'll turn her skin into dried-out leather, her body into a badlands landscape, a rack of bones in the desert.

⁴ born one and all in a whorehouse.

⁵ bringing bastard children into the world. She said, 'I'm off to see my lovers! They'll wine and dine me, Dress and caress me, perfume and adorn me!'

⁶ then lose her in a dead-end alley.

⁷ but not bring down a single one. She'll look high and low but won't find a one. Then she'll say, 'I'm going back to my husband, the one I started out with. That was a better life by far than this one.'

⁸ who wined and dined and adorned her, That I was the one who dressed her up in the big-city fashions and jewelry that she wasted on wild Baal-orgies.

⁹ Silk lingerie and gowns are a thing of the past.

¹⁰ All her fly-by-night lovers will be helpless to help her.

¹¹ her wild weekends and unholy holidays.

¹² of which she bragged, 'Whoring paid for all this!' They will soon be dumping grounds for garbage, feeding grounds for stray dogs and cats.

¹³ all that sensuous Baal worship And all the promiscuous sex that went with it, stalking her lovers, dressed to kill, And not a thought for me." God's Message!

¹⁴ I'm going to start all over again. I'm taking her back out into the wilderness where we had our first date, and I'll court her.

¹⁵ I'll turn Heartbreak Valley into Acres of Hope. She'll respond like she did as a young girl, those days when she was fresh out of Egypt.

¹⁶ "you'll address me, 'Dear husband!' Never again will you address me, 'My slave-master!'

¹⁷ get rid of all the dirty false-god names, not so much as a whisper of those names again.

¹⁸ and wild animals and birds and reptiles, And get rid of all weapons of war. Think of it! Safe from beasts and bullies!

¹⁹ I'll marry you true and proper, in love and tenderness.

²⁰ You'll know me, God, for who I really am.

²¹ "I'll answer the sky, sky will answer earth,

²² and they'll all answer Jezreel.

²³ I'll have mercy on No-Mercy. I'll say to Nobody, 'You're my dear Somebody,' and he'll say 'You're my God!' "