1. “Say to your brothers, ‘My people!’and to your sisters, ‘My loved one!’
2. 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;
3. Lest I strip her naked,and make her bare as in the day that she was born,and make her like a wilderness,and set her like a dry land,and kill her with thirst.
4. Indeed, on her children I will have no mercy;for they are children of unfaithfulness;
5. 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.’
6. Therefore behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns,and I will build a wall against her,that she can’t find her way.
7. She will follow after her lovers,but she won’t overtake them;and she will seek them,but won’t find them.Then she will say, ‘I will go and return to my first husband;for then was it better with me than now.’