Hosea 2:1-4:5

1In Hebrew texts 2:1-23 is numbered 2:3-25. “Say of your brothers, ‘My people,’ and of your sisters, ‘My loved one.’

Israel Punished and Restored 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.

3Otherwise I will strip her naked 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.

4I will not show my love to her children, because they are the children of adultery.

5Their mother has been unfaithful 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 olive oil and my drink.’

6Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.

7She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; 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.’

8She has not acknowledged that I was the one who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil, who lavished on her the silver and gold— which they used for Baal.

9“Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens, and my new wine when it is ready. I will take back my wool and my linen, intended to cover her naked body.

10So now I will expose her lewdness before the eyes of her lovers; no one will take her out of my hands.

11I will stop all her celebrations: her yearly festivals, her New Moons, her Sabbath days—all her appointed festivals.

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

13I will punish her for the days 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“Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her.

15There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor Achor means trouble. a door of hope. There she will respond Or sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

16“In that day,” declares the LORD, “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master. Hebrew baal ’

17I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips; no longer will their names be invoked.

18In that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky 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.

19I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in Or with; also in verse 20 righteousness and justice, in Or with love and compassion.

20I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the LORD .

21“In that day I will respond,” declares the LORD — “I will respond to the skies, and they will respond to the earth;

22and the earth will respond to the grain, the new wine and the olive oil, and they will respond to Jezreel. Jezreel means God plants. 23I will plant her for myself in the land; I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one. Hebrew Lo-Ruhamah (see 1:6) ’ I will say to those called ‘Not my people, Hebrew Lo-Ammi (see 1:9) ’ ‘You are my people’; and they will say, ‘You are my God.’ ”

Hosea’s Reconciliation With His Wife 1The LORD said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.” 2So I bought her for fifteen shekels That is, about 6 ounces or about 170 grams of silver and about a homer and a lethek A homer and a lethek possibly weighed about 430 pounds or about 195 kilograms. of barley.

3Then I told her, “You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will behave the same way toward you.” 4For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or household gods. 5Afterward the Israelites will return and seek the LORD their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the LORD and to his blessings in the last days.

The Charge Against Israel 1Hear the word of the LORD, you Israelites, because the LORD has a charge to bring against you who live in the land: “There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land.

2There is only cursing, That is, to pronounce a curse on lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.

3Because of this the land dries up, and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea are swept away.

4“But let no one bring a charge, let no one accuse another, for your people are like those who bring charges against a priest.

5You stumble day and night, and the prophets stumble with you. So I will destroy your mother—