Chapter 2

  Say ye to your brethren, Ammi; and to your sisters, Ruhamah.  

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  Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband: let her therefore put away her prostitutions out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts;  

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  Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born, and make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and kill her with thirst.  

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  And I will not have mercy upon her children; for they are the children of lewdness.  

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  For their mother hath played the harlot: she that conceived them hath done shamefully: for she said, I will go after my lovers, that give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.  

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  Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall, that she shall not find her paths.  

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  And she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them: then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now.  

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  For she did not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which they prepared for Baal.  

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  Therefore will I return, and take away my corn in its time, and my wine in its season, and I will recover my wool and my flax given to cover her nakedness.  

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  And now will I disclose her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and none shall deliver her out of my hand.  

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  I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast days, her new moons, and her sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts.  

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  And I will destroy her vines and her fig-trees, of which she hath said, These are my rewards that my lovers have given me: and I will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall eat them.  

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  And I will visit upon her the days of Baalim, in which she burned incense to them, and she decked herself with her ear-rings and her jewels, and she went after her lovers, and forgot me, saith the LORD.  

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  Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably to her.  

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  And I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope: and she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came from the land of Egypt.  

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  And it shall be at that day, saith the LORD, that thou shalt call me Ishi; and shalt call me no more Baali.  

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  For I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth, and they shall no more be remembered by their name.  

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  And in that day will I make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven, and with the creeping animals of the ground: and I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth, and will make them to lie down in safety.  

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  And I will betroth thee to me for ever; yes, I will betroth thee to me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving-kindness, and in mercies.  

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  I will even betroth thee to me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know the LORD.  

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  And it shall come to pass in that day, I will hear, saith the LORD, I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth;  

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  And the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil; and they shall hear Jezreel.  

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  And I will sow her to me in the earth; and I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy; and I will say to them who were not my people, Thou art my people; and they shall say, Thou art my God.  

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