Hosea 2 :: Christian Standard Bible (CSB)

Rebuke your mother; rebuke her.

For she is not my wife and I am not her husband.

Let her remove the promiscuous look from her face

and her adultery from between her breasts.

Otherwise, I will strip her naked

and expose her as she was on the day of her birth.

I will make her like a desert

and like a parched land,

and I will let her die of thirst.

I will have no compassion on her children

because they are the children of promiscuity.

Yes, their mother is promiscuous;

she conceived them and acted shamefully.

For she thought, “I will follow my lovers,

the men who give me my food and water,

my wool and flax, my oil and drink.”

Therefore, this is what I will do:

I will block her[fn] way with thorns;

I will enclose her with a wall,

so that she cannot find her paths.

She will pursue her lovers but not catch them;

she will look for them but not find them.

Then she will think,

“I will go back to my former husband,

for then it was better for me than now.”

She does not recognize

that it is I who gave her the grain,

the new wine, and the fresh oil.

I lavished silver and gold on her,

which they used for Baal.

Therefore, I will take back my grain in its time

and my new wine in its season;

I will take away my wool and linen,

which were to cover her nakedness.

Now I will expose her shame

in the sight of her lovers,

and no one will rescue her from my power.

I will put an end to all her celebrations:

her feasts, New Moons, and Sabbaths —

all her festivals.

I will devastate her vines and fig trees.

She thinks that these are her wages

that her lovers have given her.

I will turn them into a thicket,

and the wild animals will eat them.

And I will punish her for the days of the Baals,

to which she burned incense.

She put on her rings and her jewelry

and followed her lovers,

but she forgot me.

This is the LORD’s declaration.

Therefore, I am going to persuade her,

lead her to the wilderness,

and speak tenderly to her.[fn]

There I will give her vineyards back to her

and make the Valley of Achor[fn]

into a gateway of hope.

There she will respond as she did

in the days of her youth,

as in the day she came out of the land of Egypt.

In that day —

this is the LORD’s declaration —

you will call me “my husband”

and no longer call me “my Baal.”[fn]

For I will remove the names of the Baals

from her mouth;

they will no longer be remembered by their names.

On that day I will make a covenant for them

with the wild animals, the birds of the sky,

and the creatures that crawl on the ground.

I will shatter bow, sword,

and weapons of war in the land[fn]

and will enable the people to rest securely.

I will take you to be my wife forever.

I will take you to be my wife in righteousness,

justice, love, and compassion.

I will take you to be my wife in faithfulness,

and you will know the LORD.

On that day I will respond —

this is the LORD’s declaration.

I will respond to the sky,

and it will respond to the earth.

The earth will respond to the grain,

the new wine, and the fresh oil,

and they will respond to Jezreel.

I will sow her[fn] in the land for myself,

and I will have compassion

on Lo-ruhamah;

I will say to Lo-ammi:

You are my people,

and he will say, “You are my God.”