The Book of Hosea, chapters 1 - 6
1 THE WORD OF THE LORD which 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 Jeroboam son of Jehoash king
of Israel.
THIS IS THE BEGINNING of the LORD's message by Hosea. He said,
Go, take a wanton for your wife and get children by her wantonness;
for like a wanton this land is unfaithful to the LORD. So he went and took
Gomer, a worthless woman; and she conceived and bore him a son. And
the Lord said to him,
Call him Jezreel; for in a little while
I will punish the line of Jehu for the blood shed in Jezreel
and put an end to the kingdom of Israel.
On that day
I will break Israel's bow in the Vale of Jezreel.
She conceived again and bore a daughter, and the LORD said to him,
Call her Lo-ruhamah;
for I will never again show love to Israel,
never again forgive them.
After weaning Lo-ruhamah, she conceived and bore a son; and the LORD
said,
Call him Lo-ammi;
for you are not my people,
and I will not be your God.
The Israelites shall become countless as the sands of the sea
which can neither be measured nor numbered;
it shall no longer be said, 'They are not my people',
they shall be called Sons of the Living God.
Then the people of Judah and of Israel shall be reunited
and shall choose for themselves a single head,
and they shall become masters of the earth;
for great shall be the day of Jezreel.
2 Then you will say to your brothers, 'You are my people',
and to your sisters, 'You are loved.'
Plead my cause with your mother;
is she not my wife and I her husband?
Plead with her to forswear those wanton looks,
to banish the lovers from her bosom.
Or I will strip her and expose her
naked as the day she was born;
I will make her bare as the wilderness,
parched as the desert,
and leave her to die of thirst.
I will show no love for her children;
they are the offspring of wantonness,
and their mother is a wanton.
She who conceived them is shameless;
she says, 'I will go after my lovers;
they will give me food and drink,
my wool and flax, my oil and my perfumes.'
Therefore will I block her road with thorn-bushes
and obstruct her path with a wall,
so that she can no longer follow her old ways.
When she pursues her lovers she will not overtake them,
when she looks for them she will not find them;
then she will say,
'I will go back to my husband again;
I was better off with him than I am now.'
For she does not know that it is I who gave her
corn, new wine, and oil,
I who lavished upon her silver and gold
which they spent on the Baal.
Therefore I will take back
my corn at the harvest and my new wine at the vintage,
and I will take away the wool and the flax
which I gave her to cover her naked body;
so I will show her up for the lewd thing she is,
and no lover will want to steal her from me.
I will ravage the vines and the fig-trees,
which she says are the fee
with which her lovers have hired her,
and turn them into a jungle where wild beasts shall feed.
I will put a stop to her merrymaking,
her pilgrimages and new moons, her sabbaths and festivals.
I will punish her for her holy days
when she burnt sacrifices to the Baalim,
when she decked herself with earrings and necklaces,
ran after her lovers and forgot me.
This is the very word of the LORD.
But now listen,
I will woo her, I will go with her into the wilderness
and comfort her:
there I will restore her vineyards,
turning to the Vale of Trouble into the Gate of Hope,
and there she will answer in her youth,
when she came up out of Egypt.
On that day she shall call me 'My husband'
and shall no more call me 'My Baal';
and I will wipe from her lips the very name of the Baalim;
never again shall their names be heard.
This is the very word of the LORD.
Then I will make a covenant on behalf of Israel with the wild beast,
the birds of the air, and the things that creep on the earth, and I will break
bow and sword and weapon of war and sweep them off the earth, so that
all living creatures may lie down without fear. I will betroth you to myself
for ever, betroth you in lawful wedlock with unfailing devotion and love;
I will betroth you to myself to have and to hold, and you shall know the
LORD. At that time I will give answer, says the LORD, I will answer for the
heavens and they will answer for the earth, and the earth will answer for the
corn, the new wine, and the oil, and they will answer for Jezreel.
Israel shall be my new sowing in the land, and I will show love to Lo-
ruhamah and say to Lo-ammi, 'You are my people', and he will say, 'Thou
art my God.'
The LORD said to me,
Go again and love a woman
loved by another man, an adulteress,
and love her as I, the LORD, love the Israelites
although they resort to other gods
and love the raisin-cakes offered to their idols.
So I got her back for fifteen pieces of silver, a homer of barley and a
measure of wine; and I said to her,
Many a long day you shall live in my house
and not play the wanton,
and have no intercourse with a man, nor I with you.
For the Israelites shall live many a long day
without a king or prince,
without sacrifice or sacred pillar,
without image or household gods;
but after that they will again seek
the LORD their God and David their king,
and turn anxiously to the LORD for his bounty in days to come.
4 Hear the word of the LORD, O Israel;
for the LORD has a charge to bring against the people of the land:
There is no good faith or mutual trust,
no knowledge of God in the land,
oaths are imposed and broken, they kill and rob;
there is nothing but adultery an license,
one deed of blood after another.
Therefore the land shall be dried up,
and all who live in it shall pine away,
and with them the wild beasts and birds of the air;
even the fish shall be swept away from the sea.
But it is not for any man to bring a charge,
it is not for him to prove a case;
the quarrel with you, false priest, is mine.
Priest? By day and by night you blunder on,
you and the prophet with you.
My people are ruined for lack of knowledge;
your own countrymen are brought to ruin.
You have rejected knowledge,
and I will reject you from serving me as priest.
You have forgotten the teaching of God,
and I, your God, will forget your sons.
The more priests there are, the more they sin against me;
their dignity I will turn to dishonour.
They feed on the sin of my people
and batten on their iniquity.
But people and priest shall be treated alike.
I will punish them for their conduct
and repay them for their deeds:
they shall eat but never be satisfied,
behave wantonly but their lust will never be overtaxed,
for they have forsaken the LORD
to give themselves to sacred prostitution.
New wine and old steal my people's wits:
they ask advice from a block of wood
and take their orders from a fetish;
for a spirit of wantonness has led them astray
and in their lusts they are unfaithful to their God.
Your men sacrifice on mountain-tops
and burn offerings on the hills,
under oak and poplar
and the terebinth's pleasant shade.
Therefore your daughters play the wanton
and your sons' brides commit adultery.
I will not punish your daughters for playing the wanton
nor your sons' brides for committing adultery,
because your men resort to wanton women
and sacrifice with temple-prostitutes.
A people without understanding comes to grief;
they are a mother turned wanton.
Bring no guilt-offering, Israel;
do not come to Gilgal, Judah,
do not go up to Beth-aven to swear by the life of the LORD,
since Israel has run wild, wild as a heifer;
and will the LORD now feed his people
like lambs in a broad meadow?
Ephraim, keeping company with idols,
has held a drunken orgy,
they have practiced sacred prostitution,
they have preferred dishonour to glory.
The wind shall sweep them away, wrapped in its wings,
and they will find their sacrifices a delusion.
5 Hear this, you priests,
and listen, all Israel; let your royal house mark my words.
Sentence is passed on you;
for you have been a snare at Mizpah,
and a net spread on Tabor.
The rebels! they have shown base ingratitude,
but I will punish them all.
I have cared for Ephraim
and I have not neglected Israel;
but now Ephraim has played the wanton
and Israel has defiled himself.
Their misdeeds have barred the way back to their God;
for a wanton spirit is in them,
and they care nothing for the LORD.
Israel's arrogance cries out against him;
Ephraim's guilt is his undoing,
and Judah no less is undone.
They go with sacrifices of sheep and cattle
to seek the LORD, but do not find him.
He has withdrawn himself from them;
for they have been unfaithful to him,
and their sons are bastards.
Now an invader shall devour their fields.
Blow the trumpet in Gibeah,
the horn in Ramah,
raise the battle-cry in Beth-aven:
'Benjamin, we are with you!'
On the tribes of Israel I have proclaimed this unalterable doom:
on the day of punishment Ephraim shall be laid waste.
The rulers of Judah act like men who move their neighbour's boundary;
on them I will pour out my wrath like a flood.
Ephraim is an oppressor trampling on justice,
doggedly pursuing what is worthless.
But I am a festering sore to Ephraim,
a canker to the house of Judah.
So when Ephraim found that he was sick,
Judah that he was covered with sores,
Ephraim went to Assyria,
he went in haste to the Great King;
but he has no power to cure you
or to heal your sores.
Yes indeed, I will be fierce as a panther to Ephraim,
fierce as a lion to Judah —
I will maul the prey and go,
carry it off beyond hope and rescue — I, the LORD.
I will go away and return to my place
until in their horror they seek me,
and look earnestly for me in their distress.
6 Come, let us return to the LORD;
for he has torn us and will heal us,
he has struck us and he will bind up our wounds;
after two days he will revive us,
on the third day he will restore us,
that in his presence we may live.
Let us humble ourselves, let us strive to know the LORD,
whose justice dawns like morning light,
and its dawning is as sure as the sunrise.
It will come to us like a shower,
like spring rains that water the earth.
O Ephraim, how shall I deal with you?
How shall I deal with you, Judah?
Your loyalty to me is like the morning mist,
like dew that vanishes early.
Therefore have I lashed you through the prophets
and torn you to shreds with my words;
loyalty is my desire, not sacrifice,
not whole-offerings but the knowledge of God.
At Admah they have broken my covenant,
there they have played me false.
Gilead is a haunt of evildoers,
marked by a trail of blood;
like robbers lying in wait for a man,
priests are banded together
to do murder on the road to Shechem;
their deeds are outrageous.
At Israel's sanctuary I have seen a horrible thing:
there Ephraim played the wanton
and Israel defiled himself.
And for you, too, Judah, comes a harvest of reckoning.
The New English Bible (with Apocrypha)
Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, 1970
Posted Aug 11, 2018, 8:53 PM UTC
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