TSK · Hosea 2:5

I prayed,“O my God, I am ashamed and embarrassed to lift my face to you, my God! For our iniquities have climbed higher than our heads, and our guilt extends to the heavens.

This is what the LORD says:“Where is your mother’s divorce certificate by which I divorced her? Or to which of my creditors did I sell you? Look, you were sold because of your sins; because of your rebellious acts I divorced your mother.

The Lord Expresses His Exasperation at Judah’s Persistent Idolatry“Indeed, long ago you threw off my authority and refused to be subject to me. You said,‘I will not serve you.’ Instead, you gave yourself to other gods on every high hill and under every green tree, like a prostitute sprawls out before her lovers.

“If a man divorces his wife and she leaves him and becomes another man’s wife, he may not take her back again. Doing that would utterly defile the land. But you, Israel, have given yourself as a prostitute to many gods. So what makes you think you can return to me?” says the LORD.

This is in spite of the fact that the people of Judah have as many gods as they have towns and the citizens of Jerusalem have set up as many altars to sacrifice to that disgusting god, Baal, as they have streets in the city!’

Instead we will do everything we vowed we would do. We will sacrifice and pour out drink offerings to the goddess called the Queen of Heaven just as we and our ancestors, our kings, and our leaders previously did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, were well-off, and had no troubles.

“‘But you trusted in your beauty and capitalized on your fame by becoming a prostitute. You offered your sexual favors to every man who passed by so that your beauty became his.

“‘Therefore O prostitute, Listen to the LORD’s message:

“Oholah engaged in prostitution while she was mine. She lusted after her lovers, the Assyrians– warriors

“They even sent for men from far away; when the messenger arrived, those men set out. For them you bathed, painted your eyes, and decorated yourself with jewelry.

Idolatrous Israel Will Be Punished Like a Prostitute Plead earnestly with your mother(for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband), so that she might put an end to her adulterous lifestyle, and turn away from her sexually immoral behavior.

I will destroy her vines and fig trees, about which she said,“These are my wages for prostitution that my lovers gave to me!” I will turn her cultivated vines and fig trees into an uncultivated thicket, so that wild animals will devour them.

You stumble day and night, and the false prophets stumble with you; You have destroyed your own people!

Israel’s Hired Lovers They have gone up to Assyria, like a wild donkey that wanders off. Ephraim has hired prostitutes as lovers.

In that day your beautiful young women and your young men will faint from thirst.

The Great Prostitute and the Beast Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke to me.“Come,” he said,“I will show you the condemnation and punishment of the great prostitute who sits on many waters,