The In-Dept Study of the Bible
Hosea 02
1 “Say to your brothers, ‘My people!’†
and to your sisters, ‘My loved one!’‡
2 Contend with your mother!
Contend, for she is not my wife,
neither am I her husband;
and let her put away her prostitution from
her face, and her adulteries from between her
breasts;
3 lest I strip her naked,
and make her bare as in the day that
she was born, and make her like a wilderness,
and set her like a dry land, and kill her with thirst.
4 Indeed, on her children I will have no
mercy, for they are children of unfaithfulness.
5 For their mother has played the prostitute.
She who conceived them has done
shamefully; for she said, ‘I will go after my lovers,
who give me 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 I will build a wall against her,
that she can’t find her way.
7 She will follow after her lovers,
but she won’t overtake them;
and she will seek them,but won’t find them.
Then she will say, ‘I will go and return to
my first husband,for then it was better
with me than now.’
8 For she didn’t know that I gave her the
grain, the new wine, and the oil,
and multiplied to her silver and gold,
which they used for Baal.
9 Therefore I will take back my grain in its
time, and my new wine in its season,
and will pluck away my wool and my
flax which should have covered her
nakedness.
10 Now I will uncover her lewdness in the
sight of her lovers, and no one will
deliver her out of my hand.
11 I will also cause all her celebrations to
cease: her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths,
and all her solemn assemblies.
12 I will lay waste her vines and her fig
trees, about which she has said, ‘These are
my wages that my lovers have given
me, and I will make them a forest,
and the animals of the field shall eat
them.
13 I will visit on her the days of the Baals,
to which she burned incense
when she decked herself with her earrings
and her jewels, and went after her lovers
and forgot me,” says Yahweh.
14 “Therefore behold, I will allure her,
and bring her into the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to her.
15 I will give her vineyards from there,
and the valley of Achor for a door of
hope; and 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.
16 It will be in that day,” says Yahweh,
“that you will call me ‘my husband
and no longer call me ‘my master
17 For I will take away the names of the
Baals out of her mouth,
and they will no longer be mentioned
by name.
18 In that day I will make a covenant for
them with the animals of the field,
and with the birds of the sky,
and with the creeping things of the
ground. I will break the bow, the sword,
and the battle out of the land,and will
make them lie down safely.
19 I will betroth you to me forever.
Yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness,
in justice, in loving kindness, and in compassion.
20 I will even betroth you to me in faithfulness;
and you shall know Yahweh.
21 It will happen in that day, that I will
respond,” says Yahweh. “I will respond to the heavens,
and they will respond to the earth;
22 and the earth will respond to the
grain, and the new wine, and the oil;
and they will respond to Jezreel.
23 I will sow her to me in the earth;
and I will have mercy on her who had
not obtained mercy; and I will tell
those who were not my
people, ‘You are my people;
and they will say, ‘You are My God!