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Israel’s Adultery Rebuked

¹ “Say of your brothers, ‘My people,’ and of your sisters, ‘My loved one.’² Rebuke your mother, rebuke her, for she is not My wife, and I am not her husband. Let her remove the adultery from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.³ Otherwise, I will strip her naked and expose her like the day of her birth. I will make her like a desert and turn her into a parched land, and I will let her die of thirst.⁴ I will have no compassion on her children because they are the children of adultery.⁵ For their mother has played the harlot and has conceived them in disgrace. For she thought, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me bread and water, wool and linen, oil and drink.’

⁶ Therefore, behold, I will hedge up her path^(a) with thorns; I will enclose her with a wall, so she cannot find her way.⁷ She will pursue her lovers but not catch them; she will seek them but not find them. Then she will say, ‘I will return to my first husband, for then I was better off than now.’⁸ For she does not acknowledge that it was I who gave her grain, new wine and oil, who lavished her with silver and gold—which was crafted for Baal.⁹ Therefore I will take back My grain in its time and My new wine in its season; I will take away My wool and linen, which were given to cover her nakedness.¹⁰ And then I will expose her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one will deliver her out of My hands.¹¹ I will put an end to all her exultation: her feasts, New Moons, and Sabbaths—all her appointed feasts.¹² I will destroy her vines and fig trees, which she thinks are the wages paid by her lovers. So I will make them into a thicket, and the beasts of the field will devour them.¹³ I will punish her for the days of the Baals when she burned incense to them, when she decked herself with rings and jewelry, and went after her lovers. But Me she forgot,” declares the LORD.

God’s Mercy to Israel

¹⁴ “Therefore, behold, I will allure her and lead her to the wilderness, and speak to her tenderly.¹⁵ There I will give back her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor^(a) into a gateway of hope. There she will respond as she did in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt.¹⁶ In that day,” declares the LORD, “you will call Me ‘my husband,’ and no longer call Me ‘my Master.’¹⁷ For I will remove from her lips the names of the Baals; no longer will their names be invoked.¹⁸ On that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the creatures that crawl on the ground. And I will abolish bow and sword and weapons of war in the land, and will make them lie down in safety.¹⁹ So I will betroth you to Me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in loving devotion and compassion.²⁰ And I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will know the LORD.”²¹ “On that day I will respond—” declares the LORD—“I will respond to the heavens, and they will respond to the earth.²² And the earth will respond to the grain, to the new wine and oil, and they will respond to Jezreel^(a).²³ And I will sow her as My own in the land, and I will have compassion on ‘No Compassion.’ I will say to those called ‘Not My People,’ ‘You are My people,’ and they will say, ‘You are my God.’”