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;
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.
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.'
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.'
Therefore I will take back my grain in its time, And my new wine in its season, And will pluck away my wool and my flax which should have covered her nakedness.
I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees, About which she has said, 'These are my wages that my lovers have given me; And I will make them a forest,' And the animals of the field shall eat them.
I will visit on her the days of the Baals, To which she burned incense, When she decked herself with her earrings and her jewels, And went after her lovers, And forgot me," says Yahweh.
I will give her vineyards from there, And the valley of Achor for a door of hope; And she will respond there, As in the days of her youth, And as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt.
In that day I will make a covenant for them with the animals of the field, And with the birds of the sky, And with the creeping things of the ground. I will break the bow, the sword, and the battle out of the land, And will make them lie down safely.
I will sow her to me in the earth; And I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy; And I will tell those who were not my people, 'You are my people;' And they will say, 'My God!'"