Hosea 2:1-13

Common English Bible

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.