Hosea 2:4-7
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
The Lord and Israel His Spouse[a]
4 Accuse your mother, accuse!
for she is not my wife,
and I am not her husband.[b]
Let her remove her prostitution from her face.
her adultery from between her breasts,
5 Or I will strip her naked,[c]
leaving her as on the day of her birth;
I will make her like the wilderness,
make her like an arid land,
and let her die of thirst.
6 I will have no pity on her children,
for they are children of prostitution.
7 Yes, their mother has prostituted herself;
she who conceived them has acted shamefully.
For she said, “I will go after my lovers,[d]
who give me my bread and my water,
my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.”(A)
Footnotes
- 2:4–25 The section contains three oracles of doom (vv. 4–6, 7–9, 10–15), a transition (vv. 16–17), and three oracles of salvation (vv. 18–19, 20–22, 23–25).
- 2:4 The Lord speaks of Israel, still using the example of Hosea’s wife.
- 2:5 I will strip her naked: it was the husband’s responsibility to provide food and clothing for his wife (Ex 21:10) and now, because of her adultery, he takes back his support.
- 2:7 My lovers: even though Israel had experienced the Lord as the God of the desert, covenant and conquest, the people were inclined to turn to the local fertility deities, the Baals, who were believed to be responsible for agricultural success. They easily forgot that the Lord provides them with everything (v. 10; cf. Dt 7:13), and thus prostituted themselves by worshiping other gods.
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