Hosea 2:1-23 CEB

[1] Say to your brother, My People, and to your sister, Compassion: [2] Level a charge against your mother; plead with her! She is not my wife, and I am not her husband. Let her remove prostitution from her presence, and adultery from between her breasts, [3] or else I will strip her naked and expose her as on the day she was born. I will make her like a desert, and turn her into a dry land, and make her die of thirst. [4] I will also have no compassion on her children because they are children of prostitution. [5] Their mother has played the prostitute; she who conceived them has behaved shamefully. She said, “I will seek out my lovers; they give me my bread and my water, my wool and my linen cloth, my oil and my drink.” [6] Therefore, I will line her path with thorns; and I will build a wall against her, so that she can’t find her paths. [7] She will go after her lovers, but she won’t catch up with them; she will seek them, but she won’t find them. Then she will say, “I will return to my first husband, for I had it better then than now.” [8] She didn’t know that I gave her the corn, the new wine, and the fresh oil, and that I gave her much silver, and gold that they used for Baal. [9] So now I will take back my corn in its time, and my wine in its season; and I will take away my wool and my linen cloth, which were to cover her nakedness. [10] Now I will uncover her nakedness in plain view of her lovers, and no one will rescue her from me. [11] I will end all her religious celebrations, her festivals, her new moons, her Sabbath days, and all her sacred seasons. [12] I will destroy her vines and her fig trees, of which she said, “These are my pay, which my lovers have given to me.” I will change them into a forest, and the wild animals will eat them. [13] I will punish her for the days dedicated to the Baals, when she offered sweet-smelling sacrifices to them and dressed herself up with rings and jewelry, and went after her lovers, and forgot me, says the LORD. [14] Therefore, I will charm her, and bring her into the desert, and speak tenderly to her heart. [15] From there I will give her vineyards, and make the Achor Valley a door of hope. There she will respond to me as in the days of her youth, like the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. [16] On that day, says the LORD, you will call me, “My husband,” and no longer will you call me, “My Lord.” [17] I will take away the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they will not be mentioned by name anymore. [18] On that day, I will make a covenant for them with the wild animals, the birds in the sky, and the creeping creatures of the fertile ground. I will do away with the bow, the sword, and war from the land; I will make you lie down in safety. [19] I will take you for my wife forever; I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in devoted love, and in mercy. [20] I will take you for my wife in faithfulness; and you will know the LORD. [21] On that day I will answer, says the LORD. I will answer the heavens and they will answer the earth. [22] The earth will answer the corn, the new wine, and the fresh oil, and they will answer Jezreel; [23] I will sow him for myself in the land; and I will have compassion on No Compassion, and I will say to Not My People, “You are my people”; and he will say, “You are my God.”