Israel Unrepentant

1“Come, let us return to the Lord.

He has torn us to pieces

but he will heal us;

he has injured us

but he will bind up our wounds.

2After two days he will revive us;

on the third day he will restore us,

that we may live in his presence.

3Let us acknowledge the Lord;

let us press on to acknowledge him.

As surely as the sun rises,

he will appear;

he will come to us like the winter rains,

like the spring rains that water the earth.”

4“What can I do with you, Ephraim?

What can I do with you, Judah?

Your love is like the morning mist,

like the early dew that disappears.

5Therefore I cut you in pieces with my prophets,

I killed you with the words of my mouth—

then my judgments go forth like the sun.

6For I desire mercy, not sacrifice,

and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.

7As at Adam, they have broken the covenant;

they were unfaithful to me there.

8Gilead is a city of evildoers,

stained with footprints of blood.

9As marauders lie in ambush for a victim,

so do bands of priests;

they murder on the road to Shechem,

carrying out their wicked schemes.

10I have seen a horrible thing in Israel:

There Ephraim is given to prostitution,

Israel is defiled.

11“Also for you, Judah,

a harvest is appointed.

“Whenever I would restore the fortunes of my people,

Judgment Against Israel

1“Hear this, you priests!

Pay attention, you Israelites!

Listen, royal house!

This judgment is against you:

You have been a snare at Mizpah,

a net spread out on Tabor.

2The rebels are knee-deep in slaughter.

I will discipline all of them.

3I know all about Ephraim;

Israel is not hidden from me.

Ephraim, you have now turned to prostitution;

Israel is corrupt.

4“Their deeds do not permit them

to return to their God.

A spirit of prostitution is in their heart;

they do not acknowledge the Lord.

5Israel’s arrogance testifies against them;

the Israelites, even Ephraim, stumble in their sin;

Judah also stumbles with them.

6When they go with their flocks and herds

to seek the Lord,

they will not find him;

he has withdrawn himself from them.

7They are unfaithful to the Lord;

they give birth to illegitimate children.

When they celebrate their New Moon feasts,

he will devour their fields.

8“Sound the trumpet in Gibeah,

the horn in Ramah.

Raise the battle cry in Beth Aven;

lead on, Benjamin.

9Ephraim will be laid waste

on the day of reckoning.

Among the tribes of Israel

I proclaim what is certain.

10Judah’s leaders are like those

who move boundary stones.

I will pour out my wrath on them

like a flood of water.

11Ephraim is oppressed,

trampled in judgment,

intent on pursuing idols.

12I am like a moth to Ephraim,

like rot to the people of Judah.

13“When Ephraim saw his sickness,

and Judah his sores,

then Ephraim turned to Assyria,

and sent to the great king for help.

But he is not able to cure you,

not able to heal your sores.

14For I will be like a lion to Ephraim,

like a great lion to Judah.

I will tear them to pieces and go away;

I will carry them off, with no one to rescue them.

15Then I will return to my lair

until they have borne their guilt

and seek my face—

in their misery

they will earnestly seek me.”

The Charge Against Israel

1Hear the word of the Lord, you Israelites,

because the Lord has a charge to bring

against you who live in the land:

“There is no faithfulness, no love,

no acknowledgment of God in the land.

2There is only cursing, lying and murder,

stealing and adultery;

they break all bounds,

and bloodshed follows bloodshed.

3Because of this the land dries up,

and all who live in it waste away;

the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky

and the fish in the sea are swept away.

4“But let no one bring a charge,

let no one accuse another,

for your people are like those

who bring charges against a priest.

5You stumble day and night,

and the prophets stumble with you.

So I will destroy your mother—

6my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.

“Because you have rejected knowledge,

I also reject you as my priests;

because you have ignored the law of your God,

I also will ignore your children.

7The more priests there were,

the more they sinned against me;

they exchanged their glorious God for something disgraceful.

8They feed on the sins of my people

and relish their wickedness.

9And it will be: Like people, like priests.

I will punish both of them for their ways

and repay them for their deeds.

10“They will eat but not have enough;

they will engage in prostitution but not flourish,

because they have deserted the Lord

to give themselves 11to prostitution;

old wine and new wine

take away their understanding.

12My people consult a wooden idol,

and a diviner’s rod speaks to them.

A spirit of prostitution leads them astray;

they are unfaithful to their God.

13They sacrifice on the mountaintops

and burn offerings on the hills,

under oak, poplar and terebinth,

where the shade is pleasant.

Therefore your daughters turn to prostitution

and your daughters-in-law to adultery.

14“I will not punish your daughters

when they turn to prostitution,

nor your daughters-in-law

when they commit adultery,

because the men themselves consort with harlots

and sacrifice with shrine prostitutes—

a people without understanding will come to ruin!

15“Though you, Israel, commit adultery,

do not let Judah become guilty.

“Do not go to Gilgal;

do not go up to Beth Aven.

And do not swear, ‘As surely as the Lord lives!’

16The Israelites are stubborn,

like a stubborn heifer.

How then can the Lord pasture them

like lambs in a meadow?

17Ephraim is joined to idols;

leave him alone!

18Even when their drinks are gone,

they continue their prostitution;

their rulers dearly love shameful ways.

19A whirlwind will sweep them away,

and their sacrifices will bring them shame.

Hosea’s Reconciliation With His Wife

1The Lord said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.”

2So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley. 3Then I told her, “You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will behave the same way toward you.”

4For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or household gods. 5Afterward the Israelites will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the Lord and to his blessings in the last days.

1“Say of your brothers, ‘My people,’ and of your sisters, ‘My loved one.’

Israel Punished and Restored

2“Rebuke your mother, rebuke her,

for she is not my wife,

and I am not her husband.

Let her remove the adulterous look from her face

and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.

3Otherwise I will strip her naked

and make her as bare as on the day she was born;

I will make her like a desert,

turn her into a parched land,

and slay her with thirst.

4I will not show my love to her children,

because they are the children of adultery.

5Their mother has been unfaithful

and has conceived them in disgrace.

She said, ‘I will go after my lovers,

who give me my food and my water,

my wool and my linen, my olive oil and my drink.’

6Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes;

I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.

7She will chase after her lovers but not catch them;

she will look for them but not find them.

Then she will say,

‘I will go back to my husband as at first,

for then I was better off than now.’

8She has not acknowledged that I was the one

who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil,

who lavished on her the silver and gold—

which they used for Baal.

9“Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens,

and my new wine when it is ready.

I will take back my wool and my linen,

intended to cover her naked body.

10So now I will expose her lewdness

before the eyes of her lovers;

no one will take her out of my hands.

11I will stop all her celebrations:

her yearly festivals, her New Moons,

her Sabbath days—all her appointed festivals.

12I will ruin her vines and her fig trees,

which she said were her pay from her lovers;

I will make them a thicket,

and wild animals will devour them.

13I will punish her for the days

she burned incense to the Baals;

she decked herself with rings and jewelry,

and went after her lovers,

but me she forgot,”

declares the Lord.

14“Therefore I am now going to allure her;

I will lead her into the wilderness

and speak tenderly to her.

15There I will give her back her vineyards,

and will make the Valley of Achora door of hope.

There she will respond as in the days of her youth,

as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

16“In that day,” declares the Lord,

“you will call me ‘my husband’;

you will no longer call me ‘my master.’

17I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips;

no longer will their names be invoked.

18In that day I will make a covenant for them

with the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky

and the creatures that move along the ground.

Bow and sword and battle

I will abolish from the land,

so that all may lie down in safety.

19I will betroth you to me forever;

I will betroth you in righteousness and justice,

in love and compassion.

20I will betroth you in faithfulness,

and you will acknowledge the Lord.

21“In that day I will respond,”

declares the Lord—

“I will respond to the skies,

and they will respond to the earth;

22and the earth will respond to the grain,

the new wine and the olive oil,

and they will respond to Jezreel.

23I will plant her for myself in the land;

I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one.’

I will say to those called ‘Not my people,’ ‘You are my people’;

and they will say, ‘You are my God.’ ”

1The word of the Lord that came to Hosea son of Beeri during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and during the reign of Jeroboam son of Jehoash king of Israel:

Hosea’s Wife and Children

2When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the Lordsaid to him, “Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her, for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord.” 3So he married Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.

4Then the Lord said to Hosea, “Call him Jezreel, because I will soon punish the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel. 5In that day I will break Israel’s bow in the Valley of Jezreel.”

6Gomer conceived again and gave birth to a daughter. Then the Lord said to Hosea, “Call her Lo-Ruhamah (which means “not loved”), for I will no longer show love to Israel, that I should at all forgive them. 7Yet I will show love to Judah; and I will save them—not by bow, sword or battle, or by horses and horsemen, but I, the Lord their God, will save them.”

8After she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, Gomer had another son. 9Then the Lord said, “Call him Lo-Ammi (which means “not my people”), for you are not my people, and I am not your God.

10“Yet the Israelites will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted. In the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘children of the living God.’ 11The people of Judah and the people of Israel will come together; they will appoint one leader and will come up out of the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel.

1Great is the Lord, and most worthy of praise,

in the city of our God, his holy mountain.

2Beautiful in its loftiness,

the joy of the whole earth,

like the heights of Zaphonis Mount Zion,

the city of the Great King.

3God is in her citadels;

he has shown himself to be her fortress.

4When the kings joined forces,

when they advanced together,

5they saw her and were astounded;

they fled in terror.

6Trembling seized them there,

pain like that of a woman in labor.

7You destroyed them like ships of Tarshish

shattered by an east wind.

8As we have heard,

so we have seen

in the city of the LordAlmighty,

in the city of our God:

God makes her secure

forever.

9Within your temple, O God,

we meditate on your unfailing love.

10Like your name, O God,

your praise reaches to the ends of the earth;

your right hand is filled with righteousness.

11Mount Zion rejoices,

the villages of Judah are glad

because of your judgments.

12Walk about Zion, go around her,

count her towers,

13consider well her ramparts,

view her citadels,

that you may tell of them

to the next generation.

14For this God is our God for ever and ever;

he will be our guide even to the end.