In that day I will break Israel’s bow in the Valley of Jezreel.”

The people of Judah and the people of Israel will come together; they will appoint one leader and will come up out of the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel.

Otherwise 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.

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

I 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.

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

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

In 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.

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

Then 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.”

For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or household gods.

Afterward 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.

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

When they go with their flocks and herds to seek the Lord, they will not find him; he has withdrawn himself from them.

Ephraim will be laid waste on the day of reckoning. Among the tribes of Israel I proclaim what is certain.

Then I will return to my lair until they have borne their guilt and seek my face— in their misery they will earnestly seek me.”

After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence.

I have seen a horrible thing in Israel: There Ephraim is given to prostitution, Israel is defiled.

On the day of the festival of our king the princes become inflamed with wine, and he joins hands with the mockers.

What will you do on the day of your appointed festivals, on the feast days of the Lord?

The days of punishment are coming, the days of reckoning are at hand. Let Israel know this. Because your sins are so many and your hostility so great, the prophet is considered a fool, the inspired person a maniac.

They have sunk deep into corruption, as in the days of Gibeah. God will remember their wickedness and punish them for their sins.

“When I found Israel, it was like finding grapes in the desert; when I saw your ancestors, it was like seeing the early fruit on the fig tree. But when they came to Baal Peor, they consecrated themselves to that shameful idol and became as vile as the thing they loved.

I have seen Ephraim, like Tyre, planted in a pleasant place. But Ephraim will bring out their children to the slayer.”

“Since the days of Gibeah, you have sinned, Israel, and there you have remained. Will not war again overtake the evildoers in Gibeah?