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2. Israel Punished and Restored

¹ In Hebrew texts 2:1-23 is numbered 2:3-25.“Say of your brothers, ‘My people,’ and of your sisters, ‘My loved one.’

Israel Punished and Restored

    ² “Rebuke your mother, rebuke her,
   for she is not my wife,
   and I am not her husband.
Let her remove the adulterous look from her face
   and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.
³ Otherwise I will strip her naked
   and make her as bare as on the day she was born;
I will make her like a desert,
   turn her into a parched land,
   and slay her with thirst.
⁴ I will not show my love to her children,
   because they are the children of adultery.
⁵ Their mother has been unfaithful
   and has conceived them in disgrace.
She said, ‘I will go after my lovers,
   who give me my food and my water,
   my wool and my linen, my olive oil and my drink.’
⁶ Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes;
   I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.
⁷ She will chase after her lovers but not catch them;
   she will look for them but not find them.
Then she will say,
   ‘I will go back to my husband as at first,
   for then I was better off than now.’
⁸ She has not acknowledged that I was the one
   who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil,
who lavished on her the silver and gold—
   which they used for Baal.

    ⁹ “Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens,
   and my new wine when it is ready.
I will take back my wool and my linen,
   intended to cover her naked body.
¹⁰ So now I will expose her lewdness
   before the eyes of her lovers;
   no one will take her out of my hands.
¹¹ I will stop all her celebrations:
   her yearly festivals, her New Moons,
   her Sabbath days—all her appointed festivals.
¹² I will ruin her vines and her fig trees,
   which she said were her pay from her lovers;
I will make them a thicket,
   and wild animals will devour them.
¹³ I will punish her for the days
   she burned incense to the Baals;
she decked herself with rings and jewelry,
   and went after her lovers,
   but me she forgot,” declares the LORD.

    ¹⁴ “Therefore I am now going to allure her;
   I will lead her into the wilderness
   and speak tenderly to her.
¹⁵ There I will give her back her vineyards,
   and will make the Valley of Achor Achor means trouble. a door of hope.
There she will respond Or sing as in the days of her youth,
   as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

    ¹⁶ “In that day,” declares the LORD,
   “you will call me ‘my husband’;
   you will no longer call me ‘my master. Hebrew baal’
¹⁷ I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips;
   no longer will their names be invoked.
¹⁸ In that day I will make a covenant for them
   with the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky
   and the creatures that move along the ground.
Bow and sword and battle
   I will abolish from the land,
   so that all may lie down in safety.
¹⁹ I will betroth you to me forever;
   I will betroth you in Or with righteousness and justice,
   in Or with love and compassion.
²⁰ I will betroth you in Or with faithfulness,
   and you will acknowledge the LORD.

    ²¹ “In that day I will respond,”
   declares the LORD—
“I will respond to the skies,
   and they will respond to the earth;
²² and the earth will respond to the grain,
   the new wine and the olive oil,
   and they will respond to Jezreel. Jezreel means God plants.
²³ I will plant her for myself in the land;
   I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one. Hebrew Lo-Ruhamah (see 1:6)’
I will say to those called ‘Not my people, Hebrew Lo-Ammi (see 1:9)’ ‘You are my people’;
   and they will say, ‘You are my God.’”

The Prophet here pursues the subject we touched upon yesterday; for he shows how necessary chastisement is, when people felicitate themselves in their vices. And God, when he sees that men confess not immediately their sins, defends as it were his own cause, as one pleading before a judge. In a word, God here shows that he could not do otherwise than punish so great an obstinacy in the people, as there appeared no other remedy.

Therefore, he says, behold I — There is a special meaning in these words; for God testifies that he becomes the avenger of impieties, when people are brought into straits; as though he said, “Though the Israelites are not ready to confess that they suffer justly, yet I now declare that to punish them will be my work, when they shall be deprived of their pleasures, and when the occasion of their pride shall be removed from them.” And he intimates by the metaphorical words he uses, that he would so deal with them, as to keep the people from wandering, as they had done hitherto, after their idols; but he retains the similitude of a harlot. Now when an unchaste wife goes after her paramours, the husband must either connive at her, or be not aware of her base conduct. However this may be, wives cannot thus violate the marriage-vow, except they are set at liberty by their husbands. But when a husband understands that his wife plays the wanton, he watches her more closely, notices all her ways day and night. God now takes up this comparison, I will close up, he says, her way with thorns, and surround her with a mound, that there may be no way of access open to adulterers.

But by this simile the Prophet means that the people would be reduced to such straits, that they might not lasciviate, as they had done, in their superstitions; for while the Israelites enjoyed prosperity, they thought everything lawful for them; hence their security, and hence their contempt of the word of the Lord. By hedge, then, and by thorns, God means those adversities by which he restrains the ungodly, so that they may cease to flatter themselves, and may not thoughtlessly follow, as they were before wont to do, their own superstitions. She shall not then find her ways; that is, “I will constrain them so to groan under the burden of evils, that they shall no longer, as they have hitherto done, allow loose reins to themselves.” It afterwards follows —