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Chapter 2

[a]The number of the Israelites
    will be like the sand of the sea,
    which can be neither measured nor counted.(A)
Instead of being told,
    “You are Not-My-People,”
They will be called,
    “Children of the living God.”(B)
Then the people of Judah and of Israel
    will gather together;
They will appoint for themselves one head
    and rise up from the land;
    great indeed shall be the day of Jezreel!
Say to your brothers, “My People,”
    and to your sisters, “Pitied.”

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Footnotes

  1. 2:1–3 These verses abruptly reverse the tone of the judgments of 1:2–9 with words of hope for the covenant people: the name Jezreel is given a positive interpretation in contrast to its negative meaning in 1:4; the child named “Not-Pitied” in 1:6 is renamed “Pitied” in 2:3; the child named “Not-My-People” is renamed “My People.” The reversal of these names occurs again in 2:25.

[a]“Say of your brothers, ‘My people,’ and of your sisters, ‘My loved one.’(A)

Israel Punished and Restored

“Rebuke your mother,(B) rebuke her,
    for she is not my wife,
    and I am not her husband.
Let her remove the adulterous(C) look from her face
    and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.
Otherwise I will strip(D) her naked
    and make her as bare as on the day she was born;(E)
I will make her like a desert,(F)
    turn her into a parched land,
    and slay her with thirst.

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Footnotes

  1. Hosea 2:1 In Hebrew texts 2:1-23 is numbered 2:3-25.