Old Testament

New Testament

Hosea 2:1-9 Good News Bible (GNB)

1. So call your fellow-Israelites “God's People” and “Loved-by-the-Lord”.

2. My children, plead with your mother — though she is no longer a wife to me, and I am no longer her husband. Plead with her to stop her adultery and prostitution.

3. If she does not, I will strip her as naked as she was on the day she was born. I will make her like a dry and barren land, and she will die of thirst.

4-5. I will not show mercy to her children; they are the children of a shameless prostitute. She herself said, “I will go to my lovers — they give me food and water, wool and linen, olive oil and wine.”

6. So I am going to fence her in with thorn bushes and build a wall to block her way.

7. She will run after her lovers but will not catch them. She will look for them but will not find them. Then she will say, “I am going back to my first husband — I was better off then than I am now.”

8. She would never acknowledge that I am the one who gave her the corn, the wine, the olive oil, and all the silver and gold that she used in the worship of Baal.

9. So at harvest time I will take back my gifts of corn and wine, and will take away the wool and the linen I gave her for clothing.

Read complete chapter Hosea 2