_And it shall be on that day I will speak--'tis the oracle of Jehovah--I will speak to the heavens, and they shall speak to the earth; and the earth shall speak to the corn and the wine and the oil, and they shall speak to Jezreel, the scattered like seed_ across many lands; _but I will sow him_[487] _for Myself in the land: and I will have a father's pity upon Un-Pitied; and to Not-My-People_ I will say. _My people thou art! and he shall say, My God!_[488] The circle is thus completed on the terms from which we started. The three names which Hosea gave to the children, evil omens of Israel's fate, are reversed, and the people restored to the favour and love of their God. We might expect this glory to form the culmination of the prophecy. What fuller prospect could be imagined than that we see in the close of the second chapter? With a wonderful grace, however, the prophecy turns back from this sure vision of the restoration of the people as a whole, to pick up again the individual from whom it had started, and whose unclean rag of a life had fluttered out of sight before the national fortunes sweeping in upon the scene. This was needed to crown the story--this return to the individual. _And Jehovah said unto me, Once more go, love a wife that is loved of a paramour and is an adulteress,_[489] _as Jehovah loveth the children of Israel, the while they are turning to other gods, and love raisin-cakes_--probably some element in the feasts of the gods of the land, the givers of the grape. _Then I bought her to me for fifteen pieces of silver and a homer of barley and a lethech of wine._[490] _And I said to her, For many days shall thou abide for me alone; thou shall not play the harlot, thou shall not be for any husband; and I for my part also shall be so towards thee. For the days are many that the children of Israel shall abide without a king and without a prince, without sacrifice and without maççebah, and without ephod and teraphim._[491] _Afterwards the children of Israel shall turn and seek Jehovah their God and David their king, and shall be in awe of Jehovah and towards His goodness in the end of the days._[492]