 1 Say to your brothers, A People. And to your sisters, Mercy. 2 Contend. Contend with your mother, for she is not my wife, nor am I her husband. Let her therefore put away her fornications out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts, 3 lest I strip her naked and set her out as in the day that she was born. And lest I make her as the wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst. 4 I will not have mercy on her children because they are the children of adulteries. 5 For their mother has prostituted herself. She who conceived them has done shamefully. For she said, I will go after my lovers who give my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink. 6 Therefore behold, I will hedge your way with thorns, and wall up her wall, so that she will not find her paths. 7 She will follow after her lovers but she will not overtake them. She will seek them but will not 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 did not know that I gave her grain and wine and oil and multiplied her silver and gold that they prepared for Baal. 9 So I will return and take away my grain in its time and my wine in its season and I will recover my wool and my flax given to cover her nakedness. 10 Now I will uncover her shamefullness in the sight of her lovers and no one will deliver her out of my hand. 11 I will also cause all her joy to cease, her feast days, her new moons, and her Sabbaths, and all her appointed feasts. 12 I will destroy her vines and her fig trees about which she has said, They are my rewards that my lovers have given me. I will make them a forest and the beasts of the field will eat them. 13 I will visit on her the days of the Baals, in which she burned incense to them, and she adorned herself with her nose rings and her jewels, and she went after her lovers and forgot me, says the Lord. 14 Therefore, behold, I will lure her and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably to her. 15 I will give her vineyards from there and the valley of Achor for a door of hope. She will sing there as in the days of her youth and as in the day when she came out of the land of Egypt. 16 In that day, says the Lord, you will call me, my Husband, and no longer call me, my Baal. 17 For I will take away the names of the Baals out of her mouth and they will no longer be remembered by their name. 18 In that day, I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field and with the birds of the heavens and with the creeping things of the ground. I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth and will make them to lie down safely. 19 I will betroth you to me forever. Yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in judgment and in lovingkindness and in mercies. 20 I will even betroth you to me in faithfulness and you will know the Lord. 21 In that day, I will answer says the Lord. I will answer the heavens and they will answer the earth. 22 The earth will hear the grain and the wine and the oil and they will hear Jezreel. 23 I will sow her to me in the earth and I will have mercy on No mercy. I will say to Not my people, You are my people. Then they will say, my God.
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