1 Say to your brother, My People, and to your sister, Pitied.
2 Contend against your mother, contend — for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband — and I will put away her whoring from before me and her adultery from between her breasts,
3 that I might strip her naked and restore her as the day of her birth, and I will make her like a wilderness and render her as a parched land and kill her with thirst.
4 And upon her children also I will have no pity, because they are children of whoredom.
5 For their mother played the whore; she who bore them acted shamefully. For she said, “I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water and my clothes and my linen cloth and my oil and all the things proper for me.”
6 Therefore, behold, I am hedging up her way with thorns and will build up her ways, and she will not find her path.
7 And she shall pursue her lovers and not overtake them, and she shall seek them and shall not find them. And she shall say, “I will go and return to my former husband, for it was well with me then rather than now.”
8 And she did not know that I had given her the grain and the wine and the oil and had multiplied silver to her. But she made the silver and the gold for the goddess Baal.
9 Therefore I will return and carry off my grain in its time and my wine in its season, and I will take away my garments and my linen cloth, that she may not cover her shame.
10 And now I will uncover her impurity before her lovers, and no one shall rescue her out of my hand.
11 And I will turn away all her mirth, her feasts and her new moons and her sabbaths and all her public assemblies.
12 And I will annihilate her vine and her fig trees of which she said, “These are my pay, which my lovers have given to me.” And I will make them a witness, and the beasts of the field and the birds of the sky and the things that creep upon the earth shall devour them.
13 And I will avenge the days of the Baalim on her, when she used to sacrifice to them and put on her earrings and her necklaces and go after her lovers but forgot me, says the Lord.
14 Therefore, behold, I will deceive her and bring her down into the wilderness and speak to her heart.
15 And from there I will give her her estates and the valley of Achor, to open up her understanding. And there she will be brought low as in the days of her infancy and as in the days of her coming up out of the land of Egypt.
16 And it shall be on that day, says the Lord, she will call me “My husband” and no longer call me “Baalim.”
17 And I will remove the names of the Baalim from her mouth, and their names will be remembered no more.
18 And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the animals of the field and with the birds of the sky and with the creeping things of the ground, and I will break bow and sword and war from the land, and I will make you dwell in hope.
19 And I will betroth you to myself forever, and I will betroth you to myself in justice and in judgment and in mercy and in compassion.
20 And I will betroth you to myself in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord.
21 And it shall be on that day, says the Lord, I will give heed to heaven, and it shall give heed to the earth,
22 and the earth shall hear the grain and the wine and the oil, and they will give heed to Iezrael,
23 and I will sow her for myself in the land. And I will have pity on Not Pitied, and I will say to Not My People, “You are my people,” and he shall say, “You are the Lord my God.”
Posted By: Steve Williams
Wednesday, April 2nd 2014 at 8:03PM
You can also
click
here to view all posts by this author...
