Hosea 2:7-13
The Message
Wild Weekends and Unholy Holidays
2-13 “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 2:7-9
New International Version
7 She will chase after her lovers but not catch them;
she will look for them but not find them.(A)
Then she will say,
‘I will go back to my husband(B) as at first,(C)
for then I was better off(D) than now.’
8 She has not acknowledged(E) that I was the one
who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil,(F)
who lavished on her the silver and gold(G)—
which they used for Baal.(H)
Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
NIV Reverse Interlinear Bible: English to Hebrew and English to Greek. Copyright © 2019 by Zondervan.