2:7 Then she will pursue her lovers, but she will not catch 5 them;
she will seek them, but she will not find them. 6
Then she will say,
“I will go back 7 to my husband, 8
because I was better off then than I am now.” 9
2:18 “At that time 10 I will make a covenant for them with the wild animals,
the birds of the air, and the creatures that crawl on the ground.
I will abolish 11 the warrior’s bow and sword
– that is, every weapon of warfare 12 – from the land,
and I will allow them to live securely.” 13
2:23 Then I will plant her as my own 14 in the land.
I will have pity on ‘No Pity’ (Lo-Ruhamah).
I will say to ‘Not My People’ (Lo-Ammi), ‘You are my people!’
And he 15 will say, ‘You are 16 my God!’”
1 tn Heb “house”; cf. NCV, TEV, NLT “the people of Judah.”
2 tn The word order in this line is rhetorical, emphasizing the divine decision to withhold pity from Israel but to bestow it on Judah. The accusative direct object, which is introduced by a disjunctive vav (to denote contrast), appears before the verb: וְאֶת־בֵּית יְהוּדָה אֲרַחֵם (vé’et-bet yéhudah ’arakhem, “but upon the house of Judah I will show pity”).
3 tn Heb “by war” (so NAB, NRSV, TEV); KJV, NASB, NIV “battle.”
4 sn These military weapons are examples of the metonymy of adjunct (the specific weapons named) for subject (warfare).
5 tn Heb “overtake” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NRSV); NLT “be able to catch up with.”
6 tn In the Hebrew text the accusative direct object pronoun אֹתָם (’otam, “them”) is omitted/elided for balanced poetic parallelism. The LXX supplies αὐτους (autous, “them”); but it is not necessary to emend the MT because this is a poetic literary convention rather than a textual problem.
7 tn Heb “I will go and return” (so NRSV). The two verbs joined with vav form a verbal hendiadys. Normally, the first verb functions adverbially and the second retains its full verbal sense (GKC 386-87 §120.d, h). The Hebrew phrase אֵלְכָה וְאָשׁוּבָה (’elkhah vÿ’ashuvah, “I will go and I will return”) connotes, “I will return again.” As cohortatives, both verbs emphasize the resolution of the speaker.
8 tn Heb “to my man, the first.” Many English translations (e.g., KJV, NAB, NRSV, TEV) take this as “my first husband,” although this implies that there was more than one husband involved. The text refers to multiple lovers, but these were not necessarily husbands.
9 tn Or “because it was better for me then than now” (cf. NCV).
10 tn Heb “And in that day” (so KJV, ASV).
11 tn Heb “I will break”; NAB “I will destroy”; NCV “I will smash”; NLT “I will remove.”
12 tn Heb “bow and sword and warfare.” The first two terms in the triad וְקֶשֶׁת וְחֶרֶב וּמִלְחָמָה (vÿqeshet vÿkherev umilkhamah, literally, “bow and sword and warfare”) are examples of synecdoche of specific (bow and sword) for general (weapons of war, so CEV). However, they might be examples of metonymy (bow and sword) of association (warfare).
13 tn Heb “and I will cause them to lie down in safety.” The causative nuance (“will make them”) is retained in several English versions (e.g., KJV, ASV, NASB, NRSV).
14 tn Heb “for myself.”
15 tn The Hebrew text, carrying out the reference to the son born in 1:8-9, uses the third person masculine singular pronoun here; some English translations use third person plural (“they,” so KJV, NASB, NIV, CEV) in keeping with the immediate context, which refers to reestablished Israel.
16 tn The words “You are” do not appear in the Hebrew text, but are implied. It is necessary to supply the phrase in the translation to prevent the reader from understanding the predicate “my God” as an exclamation (cf. NAB).