1. Say you unto your brethren, Ammi; and to your sisters, Ruhamah.
2. Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband: let her therefore put away her harlotry out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts;
3. Lest I strip her naked, and make her as in the day that she was born, and make her as a wilderness, and make her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst.
4. And I will not have mercy upon her children; for they are the children of harlotry.
5. For their mother has played the harlot: she that conceived them has done shamefully: for she said, I will go after my lovers, that give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.
6. Therefore, behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns, and make a wall, so that she shall not find her paths.
7. And she 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.