“Contend with your
mother, contend,
For she is not my wife, and I am not her husband;
And let her put away her harlotry from her face
And her adultery from between her breasts,
Or I will strip
her naked
And expose her as on the day when she was born.
I will also make her like a wilderness,
Make her like desert land
And slay her with thirst.
“Also, I will have
no compassion on her children,
Because they are children of harlotry.
For their mother
has played the harlot;
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.’
“Therefore, behold,
I will hedge up her way with thorns,
And I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her
paths.
She will pursue
her lovers, but she will not overtake them;
And she will seek them, but will not find them.
Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my first husband,
For it was better for me then than now!’
“For she does not
know that it was I who gave her the grain, the new wine and the oil,
And lavished on her silver and gold,
Which they used for Baal.
Therefore, I will
take back My grain at harvest time
And My new wine in its season.
I will also take away My wool and My flax
Given to cover her nakedness.
And then I will uncover
her lewdness
In the sight of her lovers,
And no one will rescue her out of My hand.
I will also put an
end to all her gaiety,
Her feasts, her new moons, her sabbaths
And all her festal assemblies.
I will destroy her
vines and fig trees,
Of which she said, ‘These are my wages
Which my lovers have given me.’
And I will make them a forest,
And the beasts of the field will devour them.
I will punish her
for the days of the Baals
When she used to offer sacrifices to them
And adorn herself with her earrings and jewelry,
And follow her lovers, so that she forgot Me,” declares the LORD.
“Therefore, behold,
I will allure her,
Bring her into the wilderness
And speak kindly to her.
Then I will give her
her vineyards from there,
And the
And she will sing there as in the days of her youth,
As in the day when she came up from the
“It will come about
in that day,” declares the LORD,
“That you will call Me Ishi
And will no longer call Me Baali.
For I will remove
the names of the Baals from her mouth,
So that they will be mentioned by their names no more.
“In that day I will
also make a covenant for them
With the beasts of the field,
The birds of the sky
And the creeping things of the ground.
And I will abolish the bow, the sword and war from the land,
And will make them lie down in safety.
“I will betroth you
to Me forever;
Yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness
and in justice,
In lovingkindness and in compassion,
And I will betroth
you to Me in faithfulness.
Then you will know the LORD.
“It will come about
in that day that I will respond,” declares the LORD.
“I will respond to the heavens, and they will respond to the earth,
And the earth will
respond to the grain, to the new wine and to the oil,
And they will respond to Jezreel.
I will sow her for
Myself in the land.
I will also have compassion on her who
had not obtained compassion,
And I will say to those who were not My
people,
‘You are My people!’
And they will say, ‘You are my God!’”
Scripture taken from the NEW A
(c) Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by
The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)