Hosea 2:1-7 ▼

1 Say ye unto your brethren: ' Ammi'; and to your sisters, ' Ruhamah.'

2 Plead with your mother, plead; For she is not My wife, neither am I her husband; And let her put away her harlotries from her face, And her adulteries from between her breasts;

3 Lest I strip her naked, And set her as in the day that she was born, And make her as a wilderness, And set her like a dry land, And slay her with thirst.

4 And I will not have compassion upon her children; For they are children of harlotry.

5 For their mother hath played the harlot, She that conceived them hath done shamefully; For she said: 'I will go after my lovers, That give me my bread and my water, My wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink.'

6 Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, And I will make a wall against her, That she shall not find her paths.

7 And she shall run after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them, And she shall seek them, but shall not find them; Then shall she say: 'I will go and return to my first husband; For then was it better with me than now.'