Hosea 4

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Israel’s Unfaithfulness Punished

1 Say to your brothers, xYou are my people,2 and to your sisters, yYou have received mercy.3

Plead with your mother, plead

for zshe is not my wife,

and I am not her husband

that she put away aher whoring from her face,

and her adultery from between her breasts;

lest bI strip her naked

and make her as cin the day she was born,

and dmake her like a wilderness,

and make her like a parched land,

and kill her with thirst.

eUpon her children also I will have no mercy,

fbecause they are children of whoredom.

For gtheir mother has played the whore;

she who conceived them has acted shamefully.

For hshe said, I will go after my lovers,

who igive me my bread and my water,

my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.

Therefore jI will hedge up her4 way with thorns,

and kI will build a wall against her,

so that she cannot find her paths.

She shall pursue her lovers

but not overtake them,

and she shall seek them

but shall not find them.

lThen she shall say,

I will go and return to mmy first husband,

lfor it was better for me then than now.

And nshe did not know

that it was oI who gave her

pthe grain, the wine, and the oil,

and who lavished on qher silver and gold,

rwhich they used for Baal.

Therefore sI will take back

my grain in its time,

and my wine in its season,

and sI will take away my wool and my flax,

which were to cover her nakedness.

10  Now tI will uncover her lewdness

in the sight of her lovers,

and no one shall rescue her out of my hand.

11  uAnd I will put an end to all her mirth,

her feasts, her vnew moons, her vSabbaths,

and all her wappointed feasts.

12  And xI will lay waste her vines and her fig trees,

yof which she said,

These are zmy wages,

which my lovers have given me.

I will make them a forest,

aand the beasts of the field shall devour them.

13  And bI will punish her for cthe feast days of the Baals

when she burned offerings to them

and dadorned herself with her ring and jewelry,

and went after her lovers

and forgot me, declares the Lord.

The Lord’s Mercy on Israel

14  Therefore, behold, I will allure her,

and ebring her into the wilderness,

and fspeak tenderly to her.

15  And there I will give her her vineyards

and make the Valley of Achor5 a door of hope.

And there she shall answer gas in the days of her youth,

as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.

16 And hin that day, declares the Lord, you will call me My Husband, and no longer will you call me My Baal. 17 For iI will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. 18 And jI 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 kI will abolish6 the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in lsafety. 19 And I will betroth you to me mforever. nI will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. 20 nI will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And oyou shall know the Lord.

21  And pin that day qI 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 rJezreel,7

23  and sI will sow her for myself in the land.

And tI uwill have mercy on No Mercy,8

and vI will say to Not My People,9 wYou are my people;

and he shall say, You are my God.

Hosea Redeems His Wife

And the Lord said to me, xGo again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins. So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a yhomer and a lethech1 of barley. And I said to her, You must zdwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the whore, or belong to another man; so will I also be to you. For the children of Israel zshall dwell many days awithout king or prince, bwithout sacrifice or cpillar, without dephod or ehousehold gods. Afterward fthe children of Israel shall return and gseek the Lord their God, and hDavid their king, iand they shall come in fear to the Lord and to his goodness in the jlatter days.

The Lord Accuses Israel

kHear the word of the Lord, O children of Israel,

for lthe Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land.

There is no faithfulness or steadfast love,

and mno knowledge of God in the land;

nthere is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery;

they break all bounds, and obloodshed follows bloodshed.

Therefore pthe land mourns,

and all who dwell in it languish,

qand also the beasts of the field

and the birds of the heavens,

rand even the fish of the sea are taken away.

sYet let no one contend,

and let none accuse,

for with you is tmy contention, O priest.1

You shall stumble by day;

the prophet also shall stumble with you by night;

and I will destroy uyour mother.

My people are destroyed vfor lack of knowledge;

wbecause you have rejected knowledge,

I reject you xfrom being a priest to me.

And since you have forgotten the law of your God,

yI also will forget your children.

zThe more they increased,

the more they sinned against me;

aI will change their glory into shame.

bThey feed on the sin2 of my people;

they are greedy for their iniquity.

cAnd it shall be like people, like priest;

I will punish them for their ways

and repay them for their deeds.

10  dThey 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 etake away the understanding.

12  My people finquire of a piece of wood,

and their walking staff gives them oracles.

For ga spirit of whoredom has led them astray,

and they have left their God to play the whore.

13  hThey sacrifice on the tops of the mountains

and burn offerings on the hills,

iunder 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 jthe men themselves go aside with prostitutes

and sacrifice with kcult prostitutes,

and a people lwithout understanding shall come to ruin.

15  Though you play the whore, O mIsrael,

let not mJudah become guilty.

nEnter not into oGilgal,

nor go up to pBeth-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  qEphraim is joined to idols;

rleave him alone.

18  When their drink is gone, they give themselves to whoring;

stheir rulers3 dearly love shame.

19  tA wind has wrapped them4 in its wings,

and they shall ube ashamed because of their sacrifices.

Punishment Coming for Israel and Judah

vHear this, O priests!

Pay attention, O house of Israel!

Give ear, O house of the king!

For the judgment is for you;

for wyou have been a snare at Mizpah

and a net spread upon xTabor.

And ythe revolters zhave gone deep into slaughter,

but aI will discipline all of them.

bI know Ephraim,

and Israel is not hidden from me;

for now, O Ephraim, you have played the whore;

Israel is defiled.

cTheir deeds do not permit them

to return to their God.

For dthe spirit of whoredom is within them,

and they know not the Lord.

eThe pride of Israel testifies to his face;1

Israel and fEphraim shall stumble in his guilt;

fJudah also shall stumble with them.

gWith their flocks and herds they shall go

to seek the Lord,

gbut they will not find him;

hhe has withdrawn from them.

iThey have dealt faithlessly with the Lord;

for they have borne alien children.

Now the new moon shall devour them with their fields.

jBlow the horn in kGibeah,

the trumpet in lRamah.

Sound the alarm at mBeth-aven;

we follow you,2 O Benjamin!

Ephraim shall become a desolation

in the day of punishment;

among the tribes of Israel

I make known what is sure.

10  The princes of Judah have become

like nthose who move the landmark;

upon them I will pour out

my wrath like water.

11  Ephraim is ooppressed, crushed in judgment,

because he was determined to go after filth.3

12  But I am plike a moth to Ephraim,

and plike dry rot to the house of Judah.

13  When Ephraim saw his sickness,

and Judah qhis wound,

then Ephraim went rto Assyria,

and sent to the great king.4

sBut he is not able to cure you

or heal qyour wound.

14  For I will be tlike a lion to uEphraim,

and like a young lion to the house of uJudah.

vI, even I, will tear and go away;

I will carry off, and no one shall rescue.

15  wI will return again to my place,

until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face,

and xin their distress earnestly seek me.

Israel and Judah Are Unrepentant

Come, let us yreturn to the Lord;

for zhe has torn us, that he may heal us;

he has struck us down, and ahe will bind us up.

After two days bhe will revive us;

on the third day he will raise us up,

that we may live before him.

cLet us know; clet us press on to know the Lord;

dhis going out is sure as the dawn;

he will come to us eas the showers,

fas the spring rains that water the earth.

What shall I do with you, gO hEphraim?

What shall I do with you, O hJudah?

Your love is ilike a morning cloud,

ilike the dew that goes early away.

Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets;

I have slain them jby the words of my mouth,

and my judgment goes forth as the light.

For kI desire steadfast love1 and not sacrifice,

lthe knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

But mlike Adam they ntransgressed the covenant;

othere they dealt faithlessly with me.

pGilead is a city of evildoers,

qtracked with blood.

As robbers rlie in wait for a man,

so the priests band together;

they murder on the way to sShechem;

they commit villainy.

10  In the house of Israel I have seen a horrible thing;

tEphraim’s whoredom is there; uIsrael is defiled.

11  For you also, O uJudah, va harvest is appointed.

When wI restore the fortunes of my people,