Hosea

¹ “Say of your brothers, ‘My people,’ and of your sisters, ‘My loved one.’

² “Rebuke your mother, rebuke her, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband. Let her remove the adulterous look from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.

³ and make her as bare as on the day she was born; I will make her like a desert, turn her into a parched land, and slay her with thirst.

⁴ because they are the children of adultery.

⁵ and has conceived them in disgrace. She said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my food and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.’

⁶ I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.

⁷ she will look for them but not find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now.’

⁸ who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil, who lavished on her the silver and gold— which they used for Baal.

⁹ and my new wine when it is ready. I will take back my wool and my linen, intended to cover her nakedness.

¹⁰ before the eyes of her lovers; no one will take her out of my hands.

¹¹ her yearly festivals, her New Moons, her Sabbath days—all her appointed feasts.

¹² which she said were her pay from her lovers; I will make them a thicket, and wild animals will devour them.

¹³ she burned incense to the Baals; she decked herself with rings and jewelry, and went after her lovers, but me she forgot,” declares the Lord.

¹⁴ I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her.

¹⁵ and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

¹⁶ “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master.’

¹⁷ no longer will their names be invoked.

¹⁸ with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the creatures that move along the ground. Bow and sword and battle I will abolish from the land, so that all may lie down in safety.

¹⁹ I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion.

²⁰ and you will acknowledge the Lord.

²¹ declares the Lord— “I will respond to the skies, and they will respond to the earth;

²² the new wine and oil, and they will respond to Jezreel.

²³ I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one.’ I will say to those called ‘Not my people,’ ‘You are my people’; and they will say, ‘You are my God.’”