Rebuke your mother, rebuke her
For she is not my wife and I’m not her husband
Let her remove the adulterous look from her face
And unfaithfulness from between her breasts
Otherwise I will strip her naked and make her as bare as on the day she was born
I will make her like a desert, turn her into a parched land and slay her with thirst
I will not show my love to her children because they are children of adultery
Their mother has been unfaithful and conceived them in disgrace
She says “I’ll go back to my lovers
Who give me my food and my water
My wool, my linen, my oil, and my drink”
Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes
I will wall her in so she cannot find her way…
She will chase after her lovers but not catch them, she will look for them and not find them
She will say “I’ll go back to my husband at first, for I was better off then than I am now”
She has not acknowledged I was the one who gave her the grain
The new wine, the new oil
Who lavished on her with silver and gold
In which they used for Ba’al
Therefore I’ll take away my grain when it ripens
And my new wine when it is ready
I will take back my wool and my linen
That was intended to cover her nakedness
So now I will expose her lewdness
Before the eyes of her lovers
No one will take her out of my hands
I will stop all her celebrations
Her yearly festivals, her new moons, her sabbath days
All her appointed feasts
I will ruin her vines and her fig trees
In which she said was paid from her lovers
I will make them a thicket and wild animals will devour them
I will punish her for the days
That she burned incense to Ba’al
She decked herself with rings and jewelry
And went after her lovers
But me she forgot–declares the Lord
Therefore I will now allure her
I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her
And there I will give back to her her vineyards
Make a valley of anchor
A door of hope
And then she will respond as in the days of her youth
As in the days she came out of Egypt
And on that day, declares the Lord
You will call me “my husband”
You will no longer call me “my master”
I will remove the names of the Ba’als from her lips
No longer will their names be invoked
In that day I will make a covenant for them
With the beasts of the field
The birds in the sky and the creatures that move along the ground
Bow and sword and battle
I will abolish them from the land
So all that may lie down in safety
I’ll betroth you to me forever
I’ll betroth you in righteousness and justice in love and compassion
I’ll betroth you in faithfulness
And you will acknowledge the Lord