1 The word of the Lord that came to aHosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of bUzziah, cJotham, dAhaz, and eHezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of fJeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.
Hosea’s Wife and Children
2 When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, g“Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great hwhoredom by forsaking the Lord.” 3 So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.
4 And the Lord said to him, “Call his name iJezreel, for in just a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the jblood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. 5 And on that day I will break the bow of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel.”
6 She conceived again and bore a daughter. And the Lord said to him, “Call her name No Mercy,1 for I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel, to forgive them at all. 7 But I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the Lord their God. kI will not save them by bow or by sword or by war or by horses or by horsemen.”
8 When she had weaned No Mercy, she conceived and bore a son. 9 And the Lord said, “Call his name Not My People,2 for you are not my people, and I am not your God.”3
10 4 lYet the number of the children of Israel shall be mlike the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. nAnd in the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” it shall be said to them, o“Children5 of the living God.” 11 And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered ptogether, and they shall appoint for themselves one head. And they shall go up from the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel.
Israel’s Unfaithfulness Punished
1 6 Say to your brothers, “You are my people,”7 and to your sisters, “You have received mercy.”8
2 “Plead with qyour mother, plead—
for she is not my wife,
and I am not her husband—
that she put away her rwhoring from her face,
and her adultery from between her breasts;
3 lest I strip her naked
and make her as in the day she was born,
and make her like a wilderness,
and make her like a parched land,
and kill her with thirst.
4 Upon her children also I will have sno mercy,
because they are children of whoredom.
5 For their mother has played the whore;
she who conceived them has acted shamefully.
For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers,
who give me my bread and my water,
my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’
6 Therefore tI will hedge up her9 way with thorns,
and uI will build a wall against her,
so that she cannot find her paths.
7 She shall pursue her lovers
but not overtake them,
and she shall seek them
but shall not find them.
Then she shall say,
‘I will go and vreturn to my first whusband,
for it was better for me then than now.’
8 And she did not know
that it was I who gave her
the grain, the wine, and the oil,
and who lavished on her silver and gold,
xwhich they used for Baal.
9 Therefore I will take back
my grain in its time,
and my wine in its season,
and I will take away my wool and my flax,
which were to cover her nakedness.
10 Now I will yuncover her lewdness
in the sight of her lovers,
and no one shall rescue her out of my hand.
11 And zI will put an end to all her mirth,
her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths,
and all her appointed feasts.
12 And I will lay waste her avines and her fig trees,
of which she said,
‘These are my wages,
which my lovers have given me.’
I will make them a forest,
and the beasts of the field shall devour them.
13 And I will punish her for the feast days of the Baals
when she bburned offerings to them
and adorned herself with her ring and jewelry,
and went after her lovers
and cforgot me, declares the Lord.
The Lord’s Mercy on Israel
14 “Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
and bring her into the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to her.
15 And there I will give her her vineyards
and make the dValley of Achor10 a door of hope.
And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth,
as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.
16 “And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me e‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.’ 17 For I will remove the fnames of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. 18 And gI will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground. And I will habolish11 the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety. 19 And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. 20 I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall iknow the Lord.
21 “And in that day I will answer, declares the Lord,
I will answer the heavens,
and they shall answer the earth,
22 and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil,
and they shall answer jJezreel,12
23 and I will sow her for myself in the land.
kAnd lI will have mercy on mNo Mercy,13
and I will say to nNot My People,14 o‘You are my people’;
and he shall say, ‘You are my God.’”
Hosea Redeems His Wife
1 And the Lord said to me, p“Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord qloves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.” 2 So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech15 of barley. 3 And I said to her, “You must dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the whore, or belong to another man; so will I also be to you.” 4 For the children of Israel shall dwell many days rwithout king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without sephod or household gods. 5 Afterward the children of Israel shall return and tseek the Lord their God, uand vDavid their king, and they shall come in fear to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days.
The Lord Accuses Israel
1 Hear the word of the Lord, O children of Israel,
for wthe Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land.
There is no faithfulness or steadfast love,
and no xknowledge of God in the land;
2 there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery;
they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.
3 Therefore the land mourns,
and all who dwell in it languish,
and also the beasts of the field
and the birds of the heavens,
and even the yfish of the sea are taken away.
4 Yet let no one contend,
and let none accuse,
for with you is my contention, O zpriest.16
5 You shall stumble by day;
the prophet also shall stumble with you by night;
and I will destroy ayour mother.
6 My people are destroyed bfor lack of knowledge;
because you have rejected knowledge,
I reject you from being a priest to me.
And since you have forgotten the law of your God,
I also will forget your children.
7 cThe more they increased,
the more they sinned against me;
I will change their glory into dshame.
8 They feed on the sin17 of my people;
they are greedy for their iniquity.
9 eAnd it shall be like people, like priest;
I will punish them for their ways
and repay them for their deeds.
10 fThey shall eat, but not be satisfied;
they shall play the whore, but not multiply,
because they have forsaken the Lord
to cherish 11 whoredom, wine, and new wine,
which take away the understanding.
12 My people inquire of a piece of wood,
and their walking staff gives them oracles.
For a gspirit of whoredom has led them astray,
and they have left their God to play the whore.
13 They sacrifice hon the tops of the mountains
and burn offerings on the hills,
under oak, poplar, and terebinth,
because their shade is good.
Therefore your daughters play the whore,
and your brides commit adultery.
14 I will not punish your daughters when they play the whore,
nor your brides when they commit adultery;
for the men themselves go aside with prostitutes
and sacrifice with cult prostitutes,
and a people iwithout understanding shall come to ruin.
15 Though you play the whore, O Israel,
let not Judah become guilty.
Enter not into jGilgal,
nor go up to kBeth-aven,
and swear not, “As the Lord lives.”
16 Like a stubborn heifer,
Israel is stubborn;
can the Lord now feed them
like a lamb in a broad pasture?
17 Ephraim is joined to idols;
leave him alone.
18 When their drink is gone, they give themselves to whoring;
their rulers18 dearly love shame.
19 A wind has wrapped them19 in its wings,
and they shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices.
Prologue
1 The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants1 athe things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his bangel to his servant cJohn, 2 who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. 3 dBlessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, efor the time is fnear.
Greeting to the Seven Churches
4 John to the seven churches that are in Asia:
Grace to you and peace from him gwho is and who was and who is to come, and from hthe seven spirits who are before his throne, 5 and from Jesus Christ the ifaithful witness, jthe firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.
To him who kloves us land has freed us from our sins by his blood 6 and made us a kingdom, mpriests to his God and Father, nto him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. 7 oBehold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who ppierced him, and qall tribes of the earth will wail2 on account of him. Even so. Amen.
8 r“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”
Vision of the Son of Man
9 I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. 10 I was sin the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice tlike a trumpet 11 saying, “Write what you see in a book and usend it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.”
12 Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw vseven golden wlampstands, 13 and in the midst of the lampstands xone like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and ywith a golden sash around his chest. 14 zThe hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. aHis eyes were like a flame of fire, 15 his feet were like bburnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was clike the roar of many waters. 16 In his right hand he held seven stars, dfrom his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and ehis face was like the sun shining in full strength.
17 When I saw him, I ffell at his feet as though dead. gBut he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not, hI am the first and the last, 18 and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have ithe keys jof Death and Hades. 19 kWrite therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this. 20 As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.
