Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

¹ Lord, You have been favorable to Your land;
    You have brought back the captivity of Jacob.
² You have forgiven the iniquity of Your people;
    You have covered all their sin. Selah
³ You have withdrawn all Your wrath;
    You have turned from the fierceness of Your anger.

² Plead with your mother, plead—
    for she is not My wife,
    and am I not her husband—
that she put away her harlotry from her face,
    and her adultery from between her breasts,
³ lest I strip her naked
    and leave her as in the day that she was born,
and turn her into a wilderness,
    and turn her into a dry land,
    and kill her with thirst.
⁴ I will not have mercy upon her children,
    for they are children of harlotry.
⁵ For their mother has played the whore.
    She that conceived them has acted shamefully.
For she said, “I will pursue my lovers,
    who provide my bread and my water,
    my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.”
⁶ Therefore, behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns,
    and make a wall, so that she will not find her paths.
⁷ She will pursue her lovers, but she will not reach them;
    and she will seek them but will not find them.
Then she will say,
    “I will go and return to my first husband,
    for it was better for me then than now.”
⁸ But she did not know that it was I who provided her
    the grain, the wine, and the oil,
and multiplied her silver and gold
    that they used for Baal.

¹⁴ Therefore, I will allure her,
    and bring her into the wilderness,
    and speak tenderly to her.
¹⁵ From there, I will give her vineyards to her,
    and the Valley of Achor as a door of hope.
She will respond there as in the days of her youth,
    and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt.