1[1] Say to your brothers, “You are my people,”[2] and to your sisters, “You have received mercy.”[3] (Ho 1:6; Ho 1:9)2“Plead with your mother, plead— for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband— that she put away her whoring from her face, and her adultery from between her breasts; (Isa 50:1; Eze 16:25; Ho 4:12)3lest I strip her naked and make her as in the day she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and make her like a parched land, and kill her with thirst. (Eze 16:4; Eze 16:39; Eze 19:13; Ho 2:9)4Upon her children also I will have no mercy, because they are children of whoredom. (Ho 1:2; Ho 1:6)5For their mother has played the whore; she who conceived them has acted 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.’ (Jer 44:17; Ho 1:2; Ho 2:8; Ho 2:12)6Therefore I will hedge up her[4] way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, so that she cannot find her paths. (Job 3:23; Job 19:8; La 3:7; La 3:9)7She shall pursue her lovers but not overtake them, and she shall seek them but shall not find them. Then she shall say, ‘I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now.’ (Isa 54:5; Lu 15:17)8And she did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine, and the oil, and who lavished on her silver and gold, which they used for Baal. (De 7:13; Isa 1:3; Eze 16:17; Eze 16:19; Ho 2:20; Ho 13:2)9Therefore I will take back my grain in its time, and my wine in its season, and I will take away my wool and my flax, which were to cover her nakedness. (Ho 2:3; Joe 1:10)10Now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one shall rescue her out of my hand. (La 1:8; Eze 16:37; Eze 23:29)11And I will put an end to all her mirth, her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths, and all her appointed feasts. (Isa 1:13; Jer 7:34; Ho 9:5; Am 8:5; Am 8:10)12And I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees, of which she said, ‘These are my wages, which my lovers have given me.’ I will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall devour them. (Isa 5:5; Ho 2:5; Ho 13:8; Mic 1:7)13And I will punish her for the feast days of the Baals when she burned offerings to them and adorned herself with her ring and jewelry, and went after her lovers and forgot me, declares the Lord. (Isa 61:10; Eze 23:40; Ho 4:9; Ho 11:2; Ho 13:1)
The Lord’s Mercy on Israel
14“Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. (Isa 40:2; Eze 20:35)15And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor[5] a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. (Jer 2:2; Eze 16:22; Eze 16:60; Ho 9:10; Ho 11:1)16“And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.’ (Ho 2:18; Ho 2:21)17For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. (Ex 23:13; Zep 1:4; Zec 13:2)18And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish[6] the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety. (Le 26:5; Job 5:23; Ps 46:9; Isa 2:4; Isa 9:5; Jer 23:6; Eze 34:25; Eze 39:9)19And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. (Jer 3:14; Eze 43:7; Ho 2:7; Ho 2:16; 2Co 11:2)20I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord. (Jer 31:34; Ho 2:19; Joh 17:3)21“And in that day I will answer, declares the Lord, I will answer the heavens, and they shall answer the earth, (Ho 2:16; Zec 8:12)22and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil, and they shall answer Jezreel,[7] (Ho 1:4; Ho 1:11)23and I will sow her for myself in the land. And I will have mercy on No Mercy,[8] and I will say to Not My People,[9] ‘You are my people’; and he shall say, ‘You are my God.’” (Le 26:12; Jer 31:33; Eze 36:9; Ho 1:6; Ho 1:9; Ho 1:10; Ho 2:1; Zec 13:9; Ro 9:25; 1Pe 2:10)