Hosea’s Wife and Children
2 When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, c“Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have dchildren of whoredom, for ethe land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.”
Israel’s Unfaithfulness Punished
1 1 Say to your brothers, x“You are my people,”2 and to your sisters, y“You have received mercy.”3
2 “Plead with your mother, plead—
for zshe is not my wife,
and I am not her husband—
that she put away aher whoring from her face,
and her adultery from between her breasts;
3 lest bI strip her naked
and make her as cin the day she was born,
and dmake her like a wilderness,
and make her like a parched land,
and kill her with thirst.
4 eUpon her children also I will have no mercy,
fbecause they are children of whoredom.
5 For gtheir mother has played the whore;
she who conceived them has acted shamefully.
For hshe said, ‘I will go after my lovers,
who igive me my bread and my water,
my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’
Hosea Redeems His Wife
1 And the Lord said to me, x“Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.” 2 So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a yhomer and a lethech1 of barley. 3 And I said to her, “You must zdwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the whore, or belong to another man; so will I also be to you.”
