Hosea 1-4
Living Bible
1 These are the messages from the Lord to Hosea, son of Beeri, during the reigns of these four kings of Judah:
Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah; and one of the kings of Israel, Jeroboam, son of Joash.
2 Here is the first message:
The Lord said to Hosea, “Go and marry a girl who is a prostitute, so that some of her children will be born to you from other men. This will illustrate the way my people have been untrue to me, committing open adultery against me by worshiping other gods.”
3 So Hosea married Gomer, daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.
4-5 And the Lord said, “Name the child Jezreel, for in the valley of Jezreel I am about to punish King Jehu’s dynasty to avenge the murders he committed;[a] in fact, I will put an end to Israel as an independent kingdom, breaking the power of the nation in the valley of Jezreel.”
6 Soon Gomer had another child—this one a daughter. And God said to Hosea, “Name her Lo-ruhamah (meaning ‘No more mercy’) for I will have no more mercy upon Israel, to forgive her again. 7 But I will have mercy on the tribe of Judah. I will personally free her from her enemies without any help from her armies or her weapons.”[b]
8 After Gomer had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she again conceived and this time gave birth to a son. 9 And God said, “Call him Lo-ammi (meaning ‘Not mine’), for Israel is not mine and I am not her God.
10 “Yet the time will come when Israel shall prosper and become a great nation; in that day her people will be too numerous to count—like sand along a seashore! Then, instead of saying to them, ‘You are not my people,’ I will tell them, ‘You are my sons, children of the Living God.’ 11 Then the people of Judah and Israel will unite and have one leader; they will return from exile together; what a day that will be—the day when God will sow his people in the fertile soil of their own land again.[c]
2 “O Jezreel,[d] rename your brother and sister. Call your brother Ammi (which means ‘Now you are mine’); name your sister Ruhamah (‘Pitied’), for now God will have mercy upon her!
2 “Plead with your mother, for she has become another man’s wife—I am no longer her husband. Beg her to stop her harlotry, to quit giving herself to others. 3 If she doesn’t, I will strip her as naked as the day she was born and cause her to waste away and die of thirst as in a land riddled with famine and drought. 4 And I will not give special favors to her children as I would to my own, for they are not my children; they belong to other men.
5 “For their mother has committed adultery. She did a shameful thing when she said, ‘I’ll run after other men and sell myself to them for food and drinks and clothes.’
6 “But I will fence her in with briars and thornbushes; I’ll block the road before her to make her lose her way, so that 7 when she runs after her lovers, she will not catch up with them. She will search for them but not find them. Then she will think, ‘I might as well return to my husband, for I was better off with him than I am now.’
8 “She doesn’t realize that all she has, has come from me. It was I who gave her all the gold and silver she used in worshiping Baal, her god!
9 “But now I will take back the wine and ripened corn I constantly supplied, and the clothes I gave her to cover her nakedness—I will no longer give her rich harvests of grain in its season or wine at the time of the grape harvest. 10 Now I will expose her nakedness in public for all her lovers to see, and no one will be able to rescue her from my hand.
11 “I will put an end to all her joys, her parties, holidays, and feasts. 12 I will destroy her vineyards and her orchards—gifts she claims her lovers gave her—and let them grow into a jungle; wild animals will eat their fruit.
13 “For all the incense she burned to Baal her idol and for the times when she put on her earrings and jewels and went out looking for her lovers and deserted me—for all these things I will punish her,” says the Lord.
14 “But I will court her again and bring her into the wilderness, and I will speak to her tenderly there. 15 There I will give back her vineyards to her and transform her Valley of Troubles into a Door of Hope. She will respond to me there, singing with joy as in days long ago in her youth after I had freed her from captivity in Egypt.
16 “In that coming day,” says the Lord, “she will call me ‘My Husband’ instead of ‘My Master.’[e] 17 O Israel, I will cause you to forget your idols, and their names will not be spoken anymore.
18 “At that time I will make a treaty between you and the wild animals, birds, and snakes, not to fear each other anymore; and I will destroy all weapons, and all wars will end.
“Then you will lie down in peace and safety, unafraid; 19 and I will bind you to me forever with chains of righteousness and justice and love and mercy. 20 I will betroth you to me in faithfulness and love, and you will really know me then as you never have before.
21-22 “In that day,” says the Lord, “I will answer the pleading of the sky for clouds, to pour down water on the earth in answer to its cry for rain. Then the earth can answer the parched cry of the grain, the grapes, and the olive trees for moisture and for dew—and the whole grand chorus shall sing together that ‘God sows!’[f] He has given all!
23 “At that time I will sow a crop of Israelites and raise them for myself! I will pity those who are ‘not pitied,’[g] and I will say to those who are ‘not my people,’ ‘Now you are my people’; and they will reply, ‘You are our God!’”
3 Then the Lord said to me, “Go, and get your wife again and bring her back to you and love her, even though she loves adultery. For the Lord still loves Israel though she has turned to other gods and offered them choice gifts.”
2 So I bought her back from her slavery[h] for a couple of dollars and eight bushels of barley, 3 and I said to her, “You must live alone for many days; do not go out with other men nor be a prostitute, and I will wait for you.”
4 This illustrates the fact that Israel will be a long time without a king or prince, and without an altar, Temple, priests, or even idols!
5 Afterward they will return to the Lord their God and to the Messiah, their King,[i] and they shall come trembling, submissive to the Lord and to his blessings in the end times.
4 Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel. The Lord has filed a lawsuit against you listing the following charges: “There is no faithfulness, no kindness, no knowledge of God in your land. 2 You swear and lie and kill and steal and commit adultery. There is violence everywhere, with one murder after another.
3 “That is why your land is not producing; it is filled with sadness, and all living things grow sick and die; the animals, the birds, and even the fish begin to disappear.
4 “Don’t point your finger at someone else and try to pass the blame to him! Look, priest, I am pointing my finger at you. 5 As a sentence for your crimes, you priests will stumble in broad daylight as well as in the night, and so will your false ‘prophets’ too; and I will destroy your mother, Israel. 6 My people are destroyed because they don’t know me, and it is all your fault, you priests, for you yourselves refuse to know me; therefore, I refuse to recognize you as my priests. Since you have forgotten my laws, I will ‘forget’ to bless your children. 7 The more my people multiplied, the more they sinned against me. They exchanged the glory of God for the disgrace of idols.
8 “The priests rejoice in the sins of the people; they lap it up and lick their lips for more! 9 And thus it is: ‘Like priests, like people’—because the priests are wicked, the people are too. Therefore, I will punish both priests and people for all their wicked deeds. 10 They will eat and still be hungry. Though they do a big business as prostitutes, they shall have no children, for they have deserted me and turned to other gods.
11 “Wine, women, and song have robbed my people of their brains. 12 For they are asking a piece of wood to tell them what to do. ‘Divine Truth’ comes to them through tea leaves![j] Longing after idols has made them foolish. For they have played the harlot, serving other gods, deserting me. 13 They sacrifice to idols on the tops of mountains; they go up into the hills to burn incense in the pleasant shade of oaks and poplars and sumac trees.
“There your daughters turn to prostitution and your brides commit adultery. 14 But why should I punish them? For you men are doing the same thing, sinning with harlots and temple prostitutes. Fools! Your doom is sealed, for you refuse to understand.
15 “But though Israel is a prostitute, may Judah stay far from such a life. O Judah, do not join with those who insincerely worship me at Gilgal and at Bethel. Their worship is mere pretense. 16 Don’t be like Israel, stubborn as a heifer, resisting the Lord’s attempts to lead her in green pastures. 17 Stay away from her, for she is wedded to idolatry.
18 “The men of Israel finish up their drinking bouts, and off they go to find some whores. Their love for shame is greater than for honor.[k]
19 “Therefore, a mighty wind shall sweep them away;[l] they shall die in shame because they sacrifice to idols.
Footnotes
- Hosea 1:4 avenge the murders he committed. He went far beyond God’s command to execute the family of Ahab. See 1 Kings 21:21 and 2 Kings 10:11. breaking the power of the nation in the valley of Jezreel, a prediction of the Assyrian conquest of Israel twenty-five years later.
- Hosea 1:7 I will personally free her from her enemies without any help from her armies or her weapons. Shortly after defeating Israel, the Assyrian emperor Sennacherib invaded Judah and besieged Jerusalem. He was driven off by special intervention of God’s angel (Isaiah 36–37).
- Hosea 1:11 the day when God will sow his people in the fertile soil of their own land again, literally, “the day of Jezreel (‘God sows’)”; see 2:23.
- Hosea 2:1 Jezreel is implied in the preceding chapter and verse.
- Hosea 2:16 “My Husband” instead of “My Master,” literally, “My Baal,” meaning “My Lord,” but this was a tainted word because it applied to idols, so it will no longer be used in reference to the true God.
- Hosea 2:21 “God sows,” literally, “Jezreel.”
- Hosea 2:23 “not pitied,” see 1:6, 9-10.
- Hosea 3:2 back from her slavery, implied.
- Hosea 3:5 to the Messiah, their King, literally, “to David, their king.” Christ was “the Greater David.”
- Hosea 4:12 through tea leaves, literally, “through their staff.” There is no modern parallel to this ancient practice used by sorcerers, whose predictions were based on how their staffs landed on the ground when thrown or allowed to fall.
- Hosea 4:18 Their love for shame is greater than for honor. The Hebrew text is uncertain. The translation follows the Greek version.
- Hosea 4:19 a mighty wind shall sweep them away. The Assyrian invasion came about twenty years later, and the nation disappeared.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
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