CHAPTER 2
1 Say ye to your brethren, They be my people; and to your sisters, That that hath gotten mercy,
2 Deem ye your mother, deem ye, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband. Do she away her fornications from her face, and her adulteries from the midst of her breasts;
3 lest peradventure I spoil her naked, and set her naked by the day of her nativity [or of her birth]. And I shall set [or put] her as a wilderness, and I shall ordain her as a land without a way, and I shall slay her in thirst.
4 And I shall not have mercy on the sons of her, for they be the sons of fornications;
5 for the mother of them did forni-cation, she is shamed that conceived them, for she said, I shall go after my lovers, that give [my] loaves to me, and my waters, and my wool, and my flax, and mine oil, and my drink.
6 For this thing, lo! I shall hedge thy way with thorns, and I shall hedge it with a wall, and she shall not find her paths.
7 And she shall follow her lovers, and shall not overtake them, and she shall seek them, and shall not find [them]; and she shall say, I shall go, and turn again to my former husband, for it was well to me then more than now.
8 And this Jerusalem knew not, that I gave to her wheat, wine, and oil; and I multiplied silver and gold to her, of which they made offering to Baal.
9 Therefore I shall turn, and take my wheat in his time, and my wine in his time; and I shall deliver my wool, and my flax, by which they covered the shame thereof.
10 And now I shall show the folly of her before the eyes of her lovers, and a man shall not deliver her from mine hand;
11 and I shall make to cease all the joy thereof, the solemnity thereof, the new moon thereof, that is, the feast of the new moon, the sabbath thereof, and all the feast times thereof.
12 And I shall destroy the vinery [or the vineyard] thereof, [and her fig tree], of which she said, These be mine hires or wages which my lovers gave to me; and I shall set [or put] it into a forest, and a beast of the field shall eat it.
13 And I shall visit on it*for the days of Baalim, in which it burnt incense, and was adorned with her earrings, and her brooch, and went after her lovers, and forgat me, saith the Lord.
14 For this thing lo! I shall give milk to it, and I shall bring it into wilder-ness, and I shall speak to the heart thereof.
15 And I shall give to it vine-tillers thereof of the same place, and the valley of Achor, that is, of troubling, for to open hope. And it shall sing there by the days of her youth, and by the days of her ascending or going up from the land of Egypt.
16 And it shall be in that day, saith the Lord, she shall call me Mine husband, and she shall no more call me Baali;
17 and I shall take away the names of Baalim from her mouth, and she shall no more have mind of the names of those.
18 And I shall smite to them a bond of peace in that day, with the beast of the field, and with the bird of the air, and with the creeping beast of the earth. And I shall all-break bow, and sword, and battle from [the] earth; and I shall make them to sleep trustily.
19 And I shall spouse thee to me without end; and I shall spouse thee to me in rightfulness [or rightwiseness], and in doom, and in mercy, and in merciful doings.
20 And I shall spouse thee to me in faith; and thou shalt know that I am the Lord.
21 And it shall be, in that day I shall hear, saith the Lord, and I shall hear heavens, and those shall hear the earth;
22 and the earth shall hear wheat, and wine, and oil, and these shall hear Jezreel.
23 And I shall sow it to me into a land, and I shall have mercy on it that was without mercy. And I shall say to that, that is not my people, Thou art my people, and it shall say, Thou art my God.
* CHAPTER 2:13 In Chapters 2 and 3 of Hosea, where the “Later Version” uses ‘it’ and ‘thereof’, the “Early Version” and other translations use ‘she’ and ‘her’.