Hosea 2:1-13 (New King James Version)

Hosea 2

 ¹ Say to your brethren, ‘My people,’^[a]
      And to your sisters, ‘Mercy^[b]is shown.’

God’s Unfaithful People

   

 ² “Bring charges against your mother, bring charges;
      For she is not My wife, nor am I her Husband!
      Let her put away her harlotries from her sight,
      And her adulteries from between her breasts;
       ³ Lest I strip her naked
      And expose her, as in the day she was born,
      And make her like a wilderness,
      And set her like a dry land,
      And slay her with thirst.
       ⁴ “ I will not have mercy on her children,
      For they are the children of harlotry.
       ⁵ For their mother has played the harlot;
      She who conceived them has behaved shamefully.
      For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers,
      Who give me my bread and my water,
      My wool and my linen,
      My oil and my drink.’
       ⁶ “ Therefore, behold,
      I will hedge up your way with thorns,
      And wall her in,
      So that she cannot find her paths.
       ⁷ She will chase her lovers,
      But not overtake them;
      Yes, she will seek them, but not find them.
      Then she will say,

      ‘ I will go and return to my first husband,
      For then it was better for me than now.’
       ⁸ For she did not know
      That I gave her grain, new wine, and oil,
      And multiplied her silver and gold—
      Which they prepared for Baal.
       ⁹ “ Therefore I will return and take away
      My grain in its time
      And My new wine in its season,
      And will take back My wool and My linen,
      Given to cover her nakedness.
       ¹⁰ Now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers,
      And no one shall deliver her from My hand.
       ¹¹ I will also cause all her mirth to cease,
      Her feast days,
      Her New Moons,
      Her Sabbaths—
      All her appointed feasts.
       ¹² “ And I will destroy her vines and her fig trees,
      Of which she has said,

      ‘ These are my wages that my lovers have given me.’
      So I will make them a forest,
      And the beasts of the field shall eat them.
       ¹³ I will punish her
      For the days of the Baals to which she burned incense.
      She decked herself with her earrings and jewelry,
      And went after her lovers;
      But Me she forgot,” says the LORD.