1Say you to your brothers, Ammi; and to your sisters, Ruhamah.
2Contend with your mother, contend; for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband; and let her put away her prostitution from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts;
3lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born, and make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and kill her with thirst.
4Yes, on her children will I have no mercy; for they are children of prostitution;
5for their mother has played the prostitute; she who conceived them has done shamefully; for she said, I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.
6Therefore, behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, that she shall not find her paths.
7She shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them: then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now.
