YouVersion Logo
Search Icon

Hosea 2:1-8

Hosea 2:1-13 The Message (MSG)

“Rename your brothers ‘God’s Somebody.’ Rename your sisters ‘All Mercy.’ “Haul your mother into court. Accuse her! She’s no longer my wife. I’m no longer her husband. Tell her to quit dressing like a whore, displaying her breasts for sale. If she refuses, I’ll rip off her clothes and expose her, naked as a newborn. I’ll turn her skin into dried-out leather, her body into a badlands landscape, a rack of bones in the desert. I’ll have nothing to do with her children, born one and all in a whorehouse. Face it: Your mother’s been a whore, bringing bastard children into the world. She said, ‘I’m off to see my lovers! They’ll wine and dine me, Dress and caress me, perfume and adorn me!’ But I’ll fix her: I’ll dump her in a field of thistles, then lose her in a dead-end alley. She’ll go on the hunt for her lovers but not bring down a single one. She’ll look high and low but won’t find a one. Then she’ll say, ‘I’m going back to my husband, the one I started out with. That was a better life by far than this one.’ She didn’t know that it was I all along who wined and dined and adorned her, That I was the one who dressed her up in the big-city fashions and jewelry that she wasted on wild Baal-orgies. I’m about to bring her up short: No more wining and dining! Silk lingerie and gowns are a thing of the past. I’ll expose her genitals to the public. All her fly-by-night lovers will be helpless to help her. Party time is over. I’m calling a halt to the whole business, her wild weekends and unholy holidays. I’ll wreck her sumptuous gardens and ornamental fountains, of which she bragged, ‘Whoring paid for all this!’ They will soon be dumping grounds for garbage, feeding grounds for stray dogs and cats. I’ll make her pay for her indulgence in promiscuous religion— all that sensuous Baal worship And all the promiscuous sex that went with it, stalking her lovers, dressed to kill, And not a thought for me.” GOD’s Message!

Hosea 2:1-8 Amplified Bible (AMP)

“[Hosea,] say to your brothers, ‘Ammi (you are my people),’ and to your sisters, ‘Ruhamah (you have been pitied and have obtained mercy).’ “Contend with your mother (nation); contend, For she is not my wife and I am not her husband; And have her remove her [marks of] prostitution from her face And her adultery from between her breasts [Is 50:1] Or I will strip her naked And expose her as on the day she was born, And make her like a wilderness And make her like a parched land And slay her with thirst. “Also, I will have no mercy on her children, Because they are the children of prostitution. “For their mother has played the prostitute; She who conceived them has acted shamefully, For she said, ‘I will pursue my lovers Who give me my food and my water, My wool and my flax, my oil and my [refreshing] drinks.’ “Therefore, behold, I [the LORD God] will hedge up her way with thorns; And I will build a wall against her [shutting off her way] so that she cannot find her paths. “She will [passionately] pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them; And she will seek them, but will not find them. Then she will say, ‘Let me go and return to my first husband, For it was better for me then than now!’ ¶“For she (Israel) has not noticed nor understood nor realized that it was I [the LORD God] who gave her the grain and the new wine and the oil, And lavished on her silver and gold, Which they used for Baal and made into his image.