Hosea 2:2
Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband: let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts; Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband: let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts;
Hosea, whose name means salvation, was the last of the great prophets of the northern kingdom, predicting the coming captivity of the tribes, warning against alliance with Egypt, and exposing the moral degeneration and decay of the nation and the gross iniquity of priests and princes. The verse declares Jehovah's separation from His people, symbolized by Hosea's own painful and pathetic personal history. In that history the Lord disowns Gomer as His wife because of her unfaithfulness and rejects her children. In the allegory the wife represents the land and the children represent the different classes of people who make up its people.
The prophecy warns Israel against wicked alliances and pleads with tender remonstrance, earnest entreaty and exhortation. It refers in part to the future. It still gives rich promises of blessing from God as the result of repentance.
God is husband to His people because He is their Maker and Redeemer, so backsliding from Him and breaking His holy law is adultery. Conformity to the world, idolatry, and every departure from God are spiritual adultery. Any attempt to mix heaven with earth, righteousness with sin, and good with evil is a most dangerous adulteration.