Chapter 2
001
"Say to your sisters, 'My people!'{'Ammi' in Hebrew} and to your brothers, 'My loved one!'
002
Contend with your father! Contend, for he is not my husband, neither am I his wife; and let him put away his prostitution from his face, and his adulteries from between his breasts;
003
Lest I strip his naked, and make him bare as in the day that he was born, and make him like a wilderness, and set him like a dry land, and kill his with thirst.
004
Indeed, on his children I will have no mercy; for they are children of unfaithfulness;
005
For their father has played the philanderer. He who conceived them has done shamefully; for he said, 'I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.'
006
Therefore, behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns, and I will build a wall against him, that he can't find his way.
007
He will follow after his lovers, but he won't overtake them; and he will seek them, but won't find them. Then he will say, 'I will go and return to my first wife; for then was it better with me than now.'
008
For he did not know that I gave him the grain, the new wine, and the oil, and multiplied to his silver and gold, which they used for Baal.
009
Therefore I will take back my grain in its time, and my new wine in its season, and will pluck away my wool and my flax which should have covered his nakedness.
010
Now I will uncover his lewdness in the sight of his lovers, and no one will deliver him out of my hand.
011
I will also cause all his celebrations to cease: his feasts, his new moons, his Sabbaths, and all his solemn assemblies.
012
I will lay waste his vines and his fig trees, about which he has said, 'These are my wages that my lovers have given me; and I will make them a forest,' and the animals of the field shall eat them.
013
I will visit on him the days of the Baals, to which he burned incense, when he decked himself with his earrings and his jewels, and went after his lovers, and forgot me," says Yahweh.
014
"Therefore, behold, I will allure him, and bring him into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to him.
015
I will give his vineyards from there, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope; and he will respond there, as in the days of his youth, and as in the day when he came up out of the land of Egypt.
016
It will be in that day," says Yahweh, "that you will call me 'my wife,' and no longer call me 'my master.'
017
For I will take away the names of the Baals out of his mouth, and they will no longer be mentioned by name.
018
In that day I will make a covenant for them with the animals of the field, and with the birds of the sky, and with the creeping things of the ground. I will break the bow, the sword, and the battle out of the land, and will make them lie down safely.
019
I will betroth you to me forever. Yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness, in justice, in loving kindness, and in compassion.
020
I will even betroth you to me in faithfulness; and you shall know Yahweh.
021
It will happen in that day, I will respond," says Yahweh, "I will respond to the heavens, and they will respond to the earth;
022
and the earth will respond to the grain, and the new wine, and the oil; and they will respond to Jezreel.
023
I will sow him to me in the earth; and I will have mercy on him who had not obtained mercy; and I will tell those who were not my people, 'You are my people;' and they will say, 'My God!'"