Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

¹ You showed favor to your land, O Lord.
You restored Jacob.
² You removed the guilt of your people. Interlude
You covered all their sin.
³ You put away all your wrath.
You turned from your burning anger.

⁴ Restore us, O God who saves us.
Put an end to your indignation with us.
⁵ Will you be angry with us forever?
Will you extend your anger through all generations?
⁶ Will you not turn and revive us,
so that your people may rejoice in you?

⁷ Show us your mercy, O Lord,
and give us your salvation.
⁸ I will hear what the true God, the Lord, will say.
He indeed speaks peace to his people, to his favored ones,
but do not let them turn to foolish ways.
⁹ Surely his salvation is near for those who fear him,
so that glory may dwell in our land.
¹⁰ Mercy and truth meet together.
Righteousness and peace kiss each other.
¹¹ Truth springs up from the earth,
and righteousness looks down from heaven.
¹² The Lord will indeed give good things,
and our land will yield its harvest.
¹³ Righteousness walks in front of him.
It prepares the way for his footsteps.

2 Say to your brothers, “My people,”^[b]
and to your sisters, “She has been shown mercy.”^[c]

² Plead with^[d] your mother!
    Plead with her, because she is not my wife,
    and I am not her husband.
    Let her put away her sexual immorality from her presence
    and her acts of adultery from between her breasts.
³ Otherwise, I will strip her naked
    and expose her as she was on the day she was born.
    I will make her like a wilderness.
    I will cause her to be like a dry land.
    I will cause her to die of thirst.
⁴ I will have no compassion on her children,
    because they are children of promiscuity,
⁵ because their mother has been promiscuous.^[e]
    She who conceived them has acted shamefully.
    She said, “I will chase after my lovers,
        the ones who give me my food and my water,
        my wool and my flax, my olive oil and my drinks.”
⁶ Therefore, this is what I will do:
    I will block your^[f] way with thorns.
    I will build a wall against her,
    so that she cannot find her paths.
⁷ She will chase after her lovers,
    but she will not reach them.
    She will seek them,
    but she will not find them.
    She will say, “I will go back to my first husband,
    because then it was better for me than it is now.”
⁸ But she would not acknowledge that I gave her the grain, the new wine, and the fresh oil.
    I gave her large amounts of silver and gold—her people used it for Baal!
⁹ That is why I will take back my grain during harvest time,
    and my new wine in its season.
    I will also take away my wool and my flax that were given to cover her nakedness.
¹⁰ Then I will expose her shameful nakedness in the sight of her lovers.
    No one will deliver her from my hand.
¹¹ I will put an end to all her celebration:
    her pilgrimage festivals,^[g] her monthly new moons, and her weekly Sabbaths—
    all her appointed festivals.
¹² I will devastate her vines and her fig trees,
    about which she said, “These are the payment^[h] that my lovers gave me.”
    I will make them into a scrub forest,
    and the wild animals will eat the crops.
¹³ I will punish her for the days with the Baals, on which she repeatedly offered incense to them.
    She adorned herself with her rings^[i] and her jewelry,
    and then she chased after her lovers,
    and she forgot me, declares the Lord.
¹⁴ But watch! I am going to court her.
    I will bring her into the wilderness.
    I will speak tenderly to her.
¹⁵ There I will give her vineyards back to her.
    The Valley of Achor^[j] will be a door of hope.
    She will respond there as in the days of her youth,
    as in the day she came up from the land of Egypt.