How do judgment and renewed espousal follow the mother’s pursuit of lovers?

The chapter opens by calling the brethren God's people and the sister one who has obtained mercy. The edition connects this with the previous chapter and Israel's converts. The mother is to be judged and put away her fornications, for she is not God's wife and he is not her husband. The note identifies her as the synagogue. The warning is nakedness, wilderness and death by drought, with no mercy for her children. She says her lovers provide bread, water, wool, flax, oil and drink. God will hedge her way with thorns and a wall; unable to find her lovers, she will say she should return to her first husband, with whom she was better off. She has not known that God gave corn, wine, oil, silver and gold used in Baal's service.

God announces the withdrawal of corn and wine in season and of wool and flax covering her disgrace. Her folly will be exposed without rescue; mirth, solemnities, new moons, sabbaths and festivals will cease. Vines and fig trees she called her lovers' rewards will be destroyed; the land becomes forest and field beasts devour her. The days of Baalim, incense, jewels and forgetting God will be visited upon her. Yet God will allure her into the wilderness and speak to her heart, give vinedressers and Achor's valley as an opening of hope, and restore singing as in youth and the departure from Egypt. The edition identifies the vinedressers as apostles, originally her children, and compares Achor's hope with success after Achan's execution in Josue 7.

She will call him My husband rather than Baali. The edition explains that Ishi and Baali were both spousal addresses, but Baali is avoided because of its affinity with the idol Baal; Baalim is its plural. God removes those names and promises a covenant with beasts, birds and creeping creatures, abolishing bow, sword and war so they sleep secure. He espouses her forever in justice, judgment, mercy, commiserations and faith, and she will know the Lord. The edition relates this to Christ's indissoluble espousals with his Church. Heaven will hear earth, earth corn, wine and oil, and these Jezrahel; the note explains this as favor toward the Church, God's seed. God sows her in the earth, has mercy on the unpitied and calls the former not-my-people his people; they answer Thou art my God. The final note relates that promise to Gentile conversion.