1 Call  * your brothers: My People

and your sisters: Compassion.

2 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.

3 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.  *

4 I will have no compassion on her children  *

because they are the children of promiscuity.

5 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."  *

6 Therefore, this is what I will do:

I will block her  * way  * with thorns;  *

I will enclose her with a wall,

so that she cannot find her paths.  *

7 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."  *

8 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.

9 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.

10 Now I will expose her shame  *

in the sight of her lovers,

and no one will rescue her from my power.

11 I will put an end to all her celebrations:  *

her feasts,  * New Moons,  * and Sabbaths —

all her festivals.

12 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.  *

13 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.

14 Therefore, I am going to persuade her,

lead her to the wilderness,  *

and speak tenderly to her.  *

15 There I will give her vineyards back to her  *

and make the Valley of Achor  *,*

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.

16 In that day —

this is the  Lord’s declaration —

you will call me "my husband"  *

and no longer call me "my Baal."  *

17 For I will remove the names of the Baals

from her mouth;

they will no longer be remembered by their names.

18 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  *,*

and will enable the people to rest securely.  *

19 I will take you to be my wife forever.  *

I will take you to be my wife in righteousness,

justice, love, and compassion.  *

20 I will take you to be my wife in faithfulness,

and you will know the Lord.  *

21 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.

22 The earth will respond to the grain,  *

the new wine, and the fresh oil,

and they will respond to Jezreel.

23 I will sow her  * 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."