Contend with your mother! Contend, for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband; and let her put away her prostitution from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts;
He will set up a banner for the nations, and will assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.
The LORD says, “Where is the bill of your mother’s divorce, with which I have put her away? Or to which of my creditors have I sold you? Behold, you were sold for your iniquities, and your mother was put away for your transgressions.
Say, ‘Hear the LORD’s word, kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: The LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel says, “Behold, I will bring evil on this place, which whoever hears, his ears will tingle.
“Go and proclaim in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, ‘The LORD says, “I remember for you the kindness of your youth, your love as a bride, how you went after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.
“They say, ‘If a man puts away his wife, and she goes from him, and becomes another man’s, should he return to her again?’ Wouldn’t that land be greatly polluted? But you have played the prostitute with many lovers; yet return again to me,” says the LORD.
Only acknowledge your iniquity, that you have transgressed against the LORD your God, and have scattered your ways to the strangers under every green tree, and you have not obeyed my voice,’” says the LORD.
In those days the house of Judah will walk with the house of Israel, and they will come together out of the land of the north to the land that I gave for an inheritance to your fathers.
“‘“Moreover you have taken your sons and your daughters, whom you have borne to me, and you have sacrificed these to them to be devoured. Was your prostitution a small matter,
You have built your lofty place at the head of every way, and have made your beauty an abomination, and have opened your feet to everyone who passed by, and multiplied your prostitution.
Righteous men will judge them with the judgement of adulteresses and with the judgement of women who shed blood, because they are adulteresses, and blood is in their hands.
When the LORD spoke at first by Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, “Go, take for yourself a wife of prostitution and children of unfaithfulness; for the land commits great adultery, forsaking the LORD.”
For their mother has played the prostitute. She who conceived them has done 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.’
He who breaks open the way goes up before them. They break through the gate, and go out. Their king passes on before them, with the LORD at their head.