“My Husband, not my Master”
you will call Me 'my Husband,' and no longer call Me 'my Master.' (Hosea 2:16 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A minor distinction between two words for a spouse.
The cultural key
The two words hide a deliberate wordplay. Both 'my Husband' (ishi) and 'my Master' (baali) were ordinary ways a wife might address her husband in Hebrew, but the second, baali, is spelled and sounded exactly like 'my Baal', the name of the Canaanite storm-god whose fertility cult had seduced Israel (Hosea's whole book casts idolatry as adultery). So God says: on the coming day of restored love, you will call Me by the tender, personal ishi, 'my Husband,' and you will no longer call Me baali, a title so soaked in Baal-worship that it cannot be spoken without evoking the very idol you chased. He is stripping His people's speech of a word that had become idolatrous. The English 'Husband' versus 'Master' preserves a hint (intimacy versus ownership) but misses that 'Master' here is a near-homonym of the pagan god's name, which is the whole point.
Recovered meaning
God contrasts the intimate 'my Husband' (ishi) with 'my Master' (baali), a word identical to 'my Baal.' He promises a restored intimacy in which His people address Him tenderly and drop a title too entangled with Baal-worship to keep.