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HOSEA 2:14-8:14

¹⁴ Therefore, I will now persuade her,
   and bring her into the wilderness,
   and speak tenderly to her.
¹⁵ From there I will give her her vineyards,
   and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
There she shall respond as in the days of her youth,
   as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.
¹⁶On that day, says the Lord, you will call me, ‘My husband’, and no longer will you call me, ‘My Baal’.^* ¹⁷For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be mentioned by name no more. ¹⁸I will make for you^* a covenant on that day with the wild animals, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground; and I will abolish^* the bow, the sword, and war from the land; and I will make you lie down in safety. ¹⁹And I will take you for my wife for ever; I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. ²⁰I will take you for my wife in faithfulness; and you shall know the Lord.
²¹ On that day I will answer, says 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 Jezreel;^*
²³   and I will sow him^* for myself in the land.
And I will have pity on Lo-ruhamah,^*
   and I will say to Lo-ammi,^* ‘You are my people’;
   and he shall say, ‘You are my God.’

Further Assurances of God’s Redeeming Love

3The Lord said to me again, ‘Go, love a woman who has a lover and is an adulteress, just as the Lord loves the people of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes.’ ²So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer of barley and a measure of wine.^* ³And I said to her, ‘You must remain as mine for many days; you shall not play the whore, you shall not have intercourse with a man, nor I with you.’ ⁴For the Israelites shall remain many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or teraphim. ⁵Afterwards the Israelites shall return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king; they shall come in awe to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days.

God Accuses Israel

4Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel;
   for the Lord has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land.
There is no faithfulness or loyalty,
   and no knowledge of God in the land.
² Swearing, lying, and murder,
   and stealing and adultery break out;
   bloodshed follows bloodshed.
³ Therefore the land mourns,
   and all who live in it languish;
together with the wild animals
   and the birds of the air,
   even the fish of the sea are perishing.

⁴ Yet let no one contend,
   and let none accuse,
   for with you is my contention, O priest.^*
⁵ You shall stumble by day;
   the prophet also shall stumble with you by night,
   and I will destroy your mother.
⁶ My people are destroyed for 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 The more they increased,
   the more they sinned against me;
   they changed^* their glory into shame.
⁸ They feed on the sin of my people;
   they are greedy for their iniquity.
⁹ And it shall be like people, like priest;
   I will punish them for their ways,
   and repay them for their deeds.
¹⁰ They shall eat, but not be satisfied;
   they shall play the whore, but not multiply;
because they have forsaken the Lord
   to devote themselves to ¹¹whoredom.

The Idolatry of Israel

Wine and new wine
   take away the understanding.
¹² My people consult a piece of wood,
   and their divining-rod gives them oracles.
For a spirit of whoredom has led them astray,
   and they have played the whore, forsaking their God.
¹³ They sacrifice on the tops of the mountains,
   and make offerings upon the hills,
under oak, poplar, and terebinth,
   because their shade is good.

Therefore your daughters play the whore,
   and your daughters-in-law commit adultery.
¹⁴ I will not punish your daughters when they play the whore,
   nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery;
for the men themselves go aside with whores,
   and sacrifice with temple prostitutes;
thus a people without understanding comes to ruin.

¹⁵ Though you play the whore, O Israel,
   do not let Judah become guilty.
Do not enter into Gilgal,
   or go up to Beth-aven,
   and do not swear, ‘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—
   let him alone.
¹⁸ When their drinking is ended, they indulge in sexual orgies;
   they love lewdness more than their glory.^*
¹⁹ A wind has wrapped them^* in its wings,
   and they shall be ashamed because of their altars.^*

Impending Judgement on Israel and Judah

5Hear this, O priests!
   Give heed, O house of Israel!
Listen, O house of the king!
   For the judgement pertains to you;
for you have been a snare at Mizpah,
   and a net spread upon Tabor,
² and a pit dug deep in Shittim;^*
   but I will punish all of them.

³ I know Ephraim,
   and Israel is not hidden from me;
for now, O Ephraim, you have played the whore;
   Israel is defiled.
⁴ Their deeds do not permit them
   to return to their God.
For the spirit of whoredom is within them,
   and they do not know the Lord.

⁵ Israel’s pride testifies against him;
   Ephraim^* stumbles in his guilt;
   Judah also stumbles with them.
⁶ With their flocks and herds they shall go
   to seek the Lord,
but they will not find him;
   he has withdrawn from them.
⁷ They have dealt faithlessly with the Lord;
   for they have borne illegitimate children.
   Now the new moon shall devour them along with their fields.

⁸ Blow the horn in Gibeah,
   the trumpet in Ramah.
Sound the alarm at Beth-aven;
   look behind you, Benjamin!
⁹ Ephraim shall become a desolation
   on the day of punishment;
among the tribes of Israel
   I declare what is sure.
¹⁰ The princes of Judah have become
   like those who remove the landmark;
on them I will pour out
   my wrath like water.
¹¹ Ephraim is oppressed, crushed in judgement,
   because he was determined to go after vanity.^*
¹² Therefore I am like maggots to Ephraim,
   and like rottenness to the house of Judah.
¹³ When Ephraim saw his sickness,
   and Judah his wound,
then Ephraim went to Assyria,
   and sent to the great king.^*
But he is not able to cure you
   or heal your wound.
¹⁴ For I will be like a lion to Ephraim,
   and like a young lion to the house of Judah.
I myself will tear and go away;
   I will carry off, and no one shall rescue.
¹⁵ I will return again to my place
   until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face.
   In their distress they will beg my favour:

A Call to Repentance

6‘Come, let us return to the Lord;
   for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us;
   he has struck down, and he will bind us up.
² After two days he will revive us;
   on the third day he will raise us up,
   that we may live before him.
³ Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord;
   his appearing is as sure as the dawn;
he will come to us like the showers,
   like the spring rains that water the earth.’

Impenitence of Israel and Judah

⁴ What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?
   What shall I do with you, O Judah?
Your love is like a morning cloud,
   like the dew that goes away early.
⁵ Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets,
   I have killed them by the words of my mouth,
   and my^* judgement goes forth as the light.
⁶ For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
   the knowledge of God rather than burnt-offerings.

⁷ But at^* Adam they transgressed the covenant;
   there they dealt faithlessly with me.
⁸ Gilead is a city of evildoers,
   tracked with blood.
⁹ As robbers lie in wait^* for someone,
   so the priests are banded together;^*
they murder on the road to Shechem,
   they commit a monstrous crime.
¹⁰ In the house of Israel I have seen a horrible thing;
   Ephraim’s whoredom is there, Israel is defiled.

¹¹ For you also, O Judah, a harvest is appointed.

When I would restore the fortunes of my people,

7¹when I would heal Israel,
   the corruption of Ephraim is revealed,
   and the wicked deeds of Samaria;
for they deal falsely,
   the thief breaks in,
   and the bandits raid outside.
² But they do not consider
   that I remember all their wickedness.
Now their deeds surround them,
   they are before my face.
³ By their wickedness they make the king glad,
   and the officials by their treachery.
⁴ They are all adulterers;
   they are like a heated oven,
whose baker does not need to stir the fire,
   from the kneading of the dough until it is leavened.
⁵ On the day of our king the officials
   became sick with the heat of wine;
   he stretched out his hand with mockers.
⁶ For they are kindled^* like an oven, their heart burns within them;
   all night their anger smoulders;
   in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.
⁷ All of them are hot as an oven,
   and they devour their rulers.
All their kings have fallen;
   none of them calls upon me.

⁸ Ephraim mixes himself with the peoples;
   Ephraim is a cake not turned.
⁹ Foreigners devour his strength,
   but he does not know it;
grey hairs are sprinkled upon him,
   but he does not know it.
¹⁰ Israel’s pride testifies against^* him;
   yet they do not return to the Lord their God,
   or seek him, for all this.

Futile Reliance on the Nations

¹¹ Ephraim has become like a dove,
   silly and without sense;
   they call upon Egypt, they go to Assyria.
¹² As they go, I will cast my net over them;
   I will bring them down like birds of the air;
   I will discipline them according to the report made to their assembly.^*
¹³ Woe to them, for they have strayed from me!
   Destruction to them, for they have rebelled against me!
I would redeem them,
   but they speak lies against me.

¹⁴ They do not cry to me from the heart,
   but they wail upon their beds;
they gash themselves for grain and wine;
   they rebel against me.
¹⁵ It was I who trained and strengthened their arms,
   yet they plot evil against me.
¹⁶ They turn to that which does not profit;^*
   they have become like a defective bow;
their officials shall fall by the sword
   because of the rage of their tongue.
So much for their babbling in the land of Egypt.

Israel’s Apostasy

8Set the trumpet to your lips!
   One like a vulture^* is over the house of the Lord,
because they have broken my covenant,
   and transgressed my law.
² Israel cries to me,
   ‘My God, we—Israel—know you!’
³ Israel has spurned the good;
   the enemy shall pursue him.

⁴ They made kings, but not through me;
   they set up princes, but without my knowledge.
With their silver and gold they made idols
   for their own destruction.
⁵ Your calf is rejected, O Samaria.
   My anger burns against them.
How long will they be incapable of innocence?
⁶   For it is from Israel,
an artisan made it;
   it is not God.
The calf of Samaria
   shall be broken to pieces.^*

⁷ For they sow the wind,
   and they shall reap the whirlwind.
The standing grain has no heads,
   it shall yield no meal;
if it were to yield,
   foreigners would devour it.
⁸ Israel is swallowed up;
   now they are among the nations
   as a useless vessel.
⁹ For they have gone up to Assyria,
   a wild ass wandering alone;
   Ephraim has bargained for lovers.
¹⁰ Though they bargain with the nations,
   I will now gather them up.
They shall soon writhe
   under the burden of kings and princes.

¹¹ When Ephraim multiplied altars to expiate sin,
   they became to him altars for sinning.
¹² Though I write for him the multitude of my instructions,
   they are regarded as a strange thing.
¹³ Though they offer choice sacrifices,^*
   though they eat flesh,
   the Lord does not accept them.
Now he will remember their iniquity,
   and punish their sins;
   they shall return to Egypt.
¹⁴ Israel has forgotten his Maker,
   and built palaces;
and Judah has multiplied fortified cities;
   but I will send a fire upon his cities,
   and it shall devour his strongholds.