Hosea 3

¹ Yahweh said to me, ‘Go a second time, give your love to a woman, loved by her husband but an adulteress in spite of it, just as Yahweh gives his love to the sons of Israel though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes’.

² So I bought her for fifteen silver shekels and a bushel-and-a-half of barley,

³ and said to her, ‘For many days you must keep yourself quietly for me, not playing the whore or offering yourself to others; and I will do the same for you’.

⁴ For the sons of Israel will be kept for many days without a king, without a leader, without sacrifice or sacred stone, without ephod or teraphim[*a] .

⁵ Afterwards the sons of Israel will come back; they will seek Yahweh their God and David their king; they will come trembling to Yahweh, come for his good things in those days to come.

¹ And the number of the sons of Israel will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted. In the place where they were told, ‘You are no people of mine’, they will be called, ‘The sons of the living God’.

² The sons of Judah and of Israel will be one again and choose themselves one single leader, and they will spread far beyond their country; so great will be the day of Jezreel.

³ To your brother say, ‘People-of-Mine’, to your sister, ‘Beloved’.