This haftarah opens with Hosea's direct call, return, Israel, to God, since you have stumbled through your own iniquity, instructing the people to bring words of genuine repentance rather than animal sacrifice, offering instead, in the text's own phrase, the fruit of their lips in place of bulls, and to renounce reliance on foreign alliances, horses and their own handiwork as objects of trust.
God answers with a promise to heal their faithlessness and love them freely, since anger has turned away, describing Israel blossoming like a lily and striking root like the cedars of Lebanon, its fragrance spreading like that same forest, and Ephraim asking rhetorically what further use idols could possibly hold once this restoration has taken place. The passage closes noting that the wise will understand these ways, since the paths of God are right and the righteous walk in them while the rebellious stumble on the same ground.
The haftarah then adds a short passage from Micah, asking rhetorically who is a God like this one, who pardons iniquity and delights in mercy rather than retaining anger, and closing with the promise that God will cast all of Israel's sins into the depths of the sea, a verse closely associated with the Tashlich ritual performed on Rosh Hashanah.