Plead ye with your mother -- plead, (For she `is' not My wife, and I `am' not her husband,) And she turneth her whoredoms from before her, And her adulteries from between her breasts,
And He hath lifted up an ensign to nations, And gathereth the driven away of Israel, And the scattered of Judah He assembleth, From the four wings of the earth.
Thus said Jehovah: `Where `is' this -- the bill of your mother's divorce, Whom I sent away? Or to which of My creditors have I sold you? Lo, for your iniquities ye have been sold, And for your transgressions Hath your mother been sent away.
Call with the throat, restrain not, As a trumpet lift up thy voice, And declare to My people their transgression, And to the house of Jacob their sins;
and hast said, Hear a word of Jehovah, ye kings of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem, Thus said Jehovah of Hosts, God of Israel: `Lo, I am bringing in evil on this place, at which the ears of every one who is hearing it do tingle,
`Go, and thou hast called in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus said Jehovah: I have remembered for thee The kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, Thy going after Me in a wilderness, in a land not sown.
Saying, `Lo, one sendeth away his wife, And she hath gone from him, And she hath been to another man, Doth he turn back unto her again? Greatly defiled is not that land? And thou hast committed whoredom with many lovers, And turn again to Me, an affirmation of Jehovah.
Only, know thine iniquity, For against Jehovah thy God thou hast transgressed, And thou dost scatter thy ways to strangers, Under every green tree, And to My voice thou hast not hearkened, An affirmation of Jehovah.
In those days do the house of Judah Go unto the house of Israel, And they come together from the land of the south, unto the land That I caused your fathers to inherit.
And thou dost take thy sons and thy daughters Whom thou hast born to Me, And dost sacrifice them to them for food. Is it a little thing because of thy whoredoms,
At every head of the way thou hast built thy high place, And thou dost make thy beauty abominable, And dost open wide thy feet to every passer by, And dost multiply thy whoredoms,
As to righteous men, they judge them with the judgment of adulteresses, And the judgment of women shedding blood, For they `are' adulteresses, And blood `is' in their hands.
The commencement of Jehovah's speaking by Hosea. And Jehovah saith unto Hosea, `Go, take to thee a woman of whoredoms, and children of whoredoms, for utterly go a-whoring doth the land from after Jehovah.'
For gone a-whoring hath their mother, Acted shamefully hath their conceiver, For she hath said, I go after my lovers, Those giving my bread and my water, My wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.
Gone up hath the breaker before them, They have broken through, Yea, they pass through the gate, Yea, they go out through it, And pass on doth their king before them, And Jehovah at their head!