When Joram saw Jehu, he said, “Is it peace, Jehu?” He answered, “What peace, so long as the prostitution of your mother Jezebel and her witchcraft abound?”
When its boughs are withered, they will be broken off. The women will come and set them on fire, for they are a people of no understanding. Therefore he who made them will not have compassion on them, and he who formed them will show them no favour.
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.
I will dash them one against another, even the fathers and the sons together,” says the LORD: “I will not pity, spare, or have compassion, that I should not destroy them.”’”
For the LORD says, “Don’t enter into the house of mourning. Don’t go to lament. Don’t bemoan them, for I have taken away my peace from this people,” says the LORD, “even loving kindness and tender mercies.
I will set my jealousy against you, and they will deal with you in fury. They will take away your nose and your ears. Your remnant will fall by the sword. They will take your sons and your daughters; and the rest of you will be devoured by the fire.
Therefore I will also deal in wrath. My eye won’t spare, neither will I have pity. Though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, yet I will not hear them.”
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.”
She conceived again, and bore a daughter. Then he said to him, “Call her name Lo-Ruhamah, for I will no longer have mercy on the house of Israel, that I should in any way pardon them.
Then the LORD’s angel replied, “O LORD of Hosts, how long will you not have mercy on Jerusalem and on the cities of Judah, against which you have had indignation these seventy years?”
See then the goodness and severity of God. Towards those who fell, severity; but towards you, goodness, if you continue in his goodness; otherwise you also will be cut off.