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.
This is what the Lord says: Where is your mother’s divorce certificate that I used to send her away? Or to which of my creditors did I sell you? Look, you were sold for your iniquities, and your mother was sent away because of your transgressions.
Only acknowledge your guilt – you have rebelled against the Lord your God. You have scattered your favours to strangers under every green tree and have not obeyed me. This is the Lord’s declaration.
You built your elevated place at the head of every street and turned your beauty into a detestable thing. You spread your legs to everyone who passed by and increased your prostitution.
If a man divorces his wife and she leaves him to marry another, can he ever return to her? Wouldn’t such a land become totally defiled? But you! You have prostituted yourself with many partners – can you return to me? This is the Lord’s declaration.
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.’
When the Lord first spoke to Hosea, he said this to him: Go and marry a woman of promiscuity, and have children of promiscuity, for the land is committing blatant acts of promiscuity by abandoning the Lord.
Say, “Hear the word of the Lord, kings of Judah and residents of Jerusalem. This is what the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says: I am going to bring such a disaster on this place that everyone who hears about it will shudder, ,
From now on, then, we do not know anyone from a worldly perspective. Even if we have known Christ from a worldly perspective, yet now we no longer know him in this way.
‘Go and announce directly to Jerusalem that this is what the Lord says: I remember the loyalty of your youth, your love as a bride – how you followed me in the wilderness, in a land not sown.
He will lift up a banner for the nations and gather the dispersed of Israel; he will collect the scattered of Judah from the four corners of the earth.
In those days the house of Judah will join with the house of Israel, and they will come together from the land of the north to the land I have given your ancestors to inherit.” ’
One who breaks open the way will advance before them; they will break out, pass through the city gate, and leave by it. Their King will pass through before them, the Lord as their leader.