1 “Say to your brothers, ‘O my people,’ and to your sisters, ‘O, compassioned one.’
2 “Strive with your mother, strive, for she is not My wife, nor am I her Husband! Let her put away her whorings from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts,
3 lest I strip her naked, and shall set her up as on the day she was born, and shall make her like a wilderness, and shall set her like a dry land, and shall put her to death with thirst.
4 “And I shall not have compassion on her children, for they are the children of whorings.
5 “For their mother has whored, she who conceived them has acted shamelessly. For she said, ‘I go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.’
6 “Therefore, see, I am hedging up your way with thorns, and I shall wall her in, so that she does not find her paths.
7 “And she shall pursue her lovers but not overtake them, and shall seek them but not find them. Then she shall say, ‘Let me go and return to my first husband, for then it was better for me than now.’
8 “And she did not acknowledge that I gave her grain, and new wine, and oil, and increased her silver and gold which they prepared for Ba‛al.
9 “Therefore I shall turn back and shall take my grain in its time and My new wine in its season, and I shall take away My wool and My linen covering her nakedness.
10 “And now I shall uncover her shame before the eyes of her lovers, and no one shall deliver her from My hand.
11 “And I shall cause all her rejoicing, her festivals, her New Moons, and her Sabbaths, even all her appointed times, to cease,
12 and lay waste her vines and her fig trees, of which she has said, ‘these are my rewards that my lovers have given me.’ And I shall make them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall eat them.
13 “And I shall punish her for the days of the Ba‛als to which she burned incense and adorned herself with her rings and jewelry, and went after her lovers, and forgot Me,” declares יהוה.
14 “Therefore, see, I am alluring her, and shall lead her into the wilderness, and shall speak to her heart,
15 and give to her vineyards from there, and the Valley of Aḵor as a door of expectation. And there she shall respond as in the days of her youth, as in the day when she came up from the land of Mitsrayim.
16 “And it shall be, in that day,” declares יהוה, “that you call Me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer call Me ‘My Ba‛al.’
17 “And I shall remove the names of the Ba‛als from her mouth, and they shall no more be remembered by their name.
18 “And in that day I shall make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, and with the birds of the heavens, and with the creeping creatures of the ground, when bow, and sword, and battle I break from the earth. And I shall make them lie down in safety.
19 “And I shall take you as a bride unto Me forever, and take you as a bride unto Me in righteousness, and in right-ruling, and kindness and compassion.
20 “And I shall take you as a bride unto Me in trustworthiness, and you shall know יהוה.
21 “And it shall be in that day that I answer,” declares יהוה, “that I answer the heavens, and they answer the earth,
22 and the earth answer the grain and the new wine and the oil, and they answer Yizre‛ĕl.
23 “And I shall sow her for Myself in the earth, and I shall have compassion on her who had not obtained compassion. And I shall say to those who were not My people, ‘You are My people,’ while they say, ‘My Elohim!’ ”