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Hosea 2
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1“Say to your brothers, ‘My people!’
- and to your sisters, ‘My loved one!’
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2Contend 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;
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3Lest 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.
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4Indeed, on her children I will have no mercy;
- for they are children of unfaithfulness;
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5For 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.’
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6Therefore, behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns,
- and I will build a wall against her,
- that she can’t find her way.
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7She 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 was it better with me than now.’
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8For she did not 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.
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9Therefore 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.
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10Now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers,
- and no one will deliver her out of my hand.
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11I will also cause all her celebrations to cease:
- her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths, and all her solemn assemblies.
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12I 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.
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13I 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.
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14“Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
- and bring her into the wilderness,
- and speak tenderly to her.
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15I 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.
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16It will be in that day,” says Yahweh,
- “that you will call me ‘my husband,’
- and no longer call me ‘my master.’
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17For I will take away the names of the Baals out of her mouth,
- and they will no longer be mentioned by name.
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18In 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.
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19I will betroth you to me forever.
- Yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness, in justice, in loving kindness, and in compassion.
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20I will even betroth you to me in faithfulness;
- and you shall know Yahweh.
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21It will happen in that day, I will respond,” says Yahweh,
- “I will respond to the heavens,
- and they will respond to the earth;
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22and the earth will respond to the grain, and the new wine, and the oil;
- and they will respond to Jezreel.
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23I 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, ‘My God!’”
