“Contend with your mother, contend, for she is not my wife, nor am I her husband, and let her put away her whoredoms from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts, lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born, and make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst.”
The context now has in mind Israel's state rather than that of Hosea's family. It is on the basis of the hope of once again being accepted that the people of Israel are to contend with their mother (clearly here the state of Israel as the fallen wife of YHWH) because of her proved unfaithfulness. That unfaithfulness is the reason why she is no longer His wife, and he is not her husband. The words ‘she is not my wife, nor am I her husband' have the ring of an official pronouncement of divorce, although probably to be seen as not yet pronounced. Unless she repents, the marriage covenant between them is about to be quashed. And the contention of her children is to be that she should put away her unfaithfulness, and her idolatry, lest she be totally exposed in the sight of the nations by having her nakedness exposed, and by being desolated and turned into a semi-desert. The indication is that repentance is still open to Israel even now, if only she will turn before it is too late.
The picture of Israel which is drawn is vivid. It depicts a prostitute with painted face (compare Jeremiah 4:30), welcoming lovers to her breasts (or having provocative ornaments on her breasts), because she has rejected YHWH and chosen to entertain false religion (a Yahwism tainted with Baalism), with the consequence that she will be stripped naked and exposed in the burning sun unless she changes her ways. In the event it would be the stripping naked and exposure which would be her lot.
Stripping naked and exposure to others was probably a recognised way of dealing with unfaithful women (compare Ezekiel 16:37). There may also be here a reference to the wilderness days which followed Israel's ‘birth', when Israel was outside the land and subject to the problems of the semi-desert, with the thought that she will again be cast out of the land.