Israel's Unfaithfulness Punished

¹1 Say to your brothers, x“You are my people,”2 and to your sisters, y“You have received mercy.”3

²“Plead with your mother, plead—

for zshe is not my wife,

and I am not her husband—

that she put away aher whoring from her face,

and her adultery from between her breasts;

³lest bI strip her naked

and make her as cin the day she was born,

and dmake her like a wilderness,

and make her like a parched land,

and kill her with thirst.

⁴eUpon her children also I will have no mercy,

fbecause they are children of whoredom.

⁵For gtheir mother has played the whore;

she who conceived them has acted shamefully.

For hshe said, ‘I will go after my lovers,

who igive me my bread and my water,

my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’

⁶Therefore jI will hedge up her4 way with thorns,

and kI will build a wall against her,

so that she cannot find her paths.

⁷She shall pursue her lovers

but not overtake them,

and she shall seek them

but shall not find them.

lThen she shall say,

‘I will go and return to mmy first husband,

lfor it was better for me then than now.’

⁸And nshe did not know

that it was oI who gave her

pthe grain, the wine, and the oil,

and who lavished on qher silver and gold,

rwhich they used for Baal.

⁹Therefore sI will take back

my grain in its time,

and my wine in its season,

and sI will take away my wool and my flax,

which were to cover her nakedness.

¹⁰Now tI will uncover her lewdness

in the sight of her lovers,

and no one shall rescue her out of my hand.

¹¹uAnd I will put an end to all her mirth,

her feasts, her vnew moons, her vSabbaths,

and all her wappointed feasts.

¹²And xI will lay waste her vines and her fig trees,

yof which she said,

‘These are zmy wages,

which my lovers have given me.’

I will make them a forest,

aand the beasts of the field shall devour them.

¹³And bI will punish her for cthe feast days of the Baals

when she burned offerings to them

and dadorned herself with her ring and jewelry,

and went after her lovers

and forgot me, declares the Lord.

The Lord's Mercy on Israel

¹⁴“Therefore, behold, I will allure her,

and ebring her into the wilderness,

and fspeak tenderly to her.

¹⁵And there I will give her her vineyards

and make the Valley of Achor5 a door of hope.

And there she shall answer gas in the days of her youth,

as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.

¹⁶“And hin that day, declares the Lord, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.’ ¹⁷For iI will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. ¹⁸And jI will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground. And kI will abolish6 the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in lsafety. ¹⁹And I will betroth you to me mforever. nI will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. ²⁰nI will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And oyou shall know the Lord.

²¹“And pin that day qI will answer, declares the Lord,

I will answer the heavens,

and they shall answer the earth,

²²and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil,

and they shall answer rJezreel,7

²³and sI will sow her for myself in the land.

And tI uwill have mercy on No Mercy,8

and vI will say to Not My People,9 w‘You are my people’;

and he shall say, ‘You are my God.’”