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Hosea 1

Hosea's Wife and Children

 ⁴ Then the LORD said to Hosea, "Call him Jezreel, because I will soon punish the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel. ⁵ In that day I will break Israel's bow in the Valley of Jezreel."

 ⁶ Gomer conceived again and gave birth to a daughter. Then the LORD said to Hosea, "Call her Lo-Ruhamah, ^[b] for I will no longer show love to the house of Israel, that I should at all forgive them. ⁷ Yet I will show love to the house of Judah; and I will save them—not by bow, sword or battle, or by horses and horsemen, but by the LORD their God."

 ⁸ After she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, Gomer had another son. ⁹ Then the LORD said, "Call him Lo-Ammi, ^[c] for you are not my people, and I am not your God.

 ¹⁰ "Yet the Israelites will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted. In the place where it was said to them, 'You are not my people,' they will be called 'sons of the living God.' ¹¹ The people of Judah and the people of Israel will be reunited, and they will appoint one leader and will come up out of the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel.

Hosea 2

 ¹ "Say of your brothers, 'My people,' and of your sisters, 'My loved one.'

Israel Punished and Restored

 ³ Otherwise I will strip her naked
       and make her as bare as on the day she was born;
       I will make her like a desert,
       turn her into a parched land,
       and slay her with thirst.

 ⁴ I will not show my love to her children,
       because they are the children of adultery.

 ⁵ Their mother has been unfaithful
       and has conceived them in disgrace.
       She said, 'I will go after my lovers,
       who give me my food and my water,
       my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.'

 ⁶ Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes;
       I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.

 ⁷ She will chase after her lovers but not catch them;
       she will look for them but not find them.
       Then she will say,
       'I will go back to my husband as at first,
       for then I was better off than now.'

 ⁸ She has not acknowledged that I was the one
       who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil,
       who lavished on her the silver and gold—
       which they used for Baal.

 ⁹ "Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens,
       and my new wine when it is ready.
       I will take back my wool and my linen,
       intended to cover her nakedness.

 ¹⁰ So now I will expose her lewdness
       before the eyes of her lovers;
       no one will take her out of my hands.

 ¹¹ I will stop all her celebrations:
       her yearly festivals, her New Moons,
       her Sabbath days—all her appointed feasts.

 ¹² I will ruin her vines and her fig trees,
       which she said were her pay from her lovers;
       I will make them a thicket,
       and wild animals will devour them.

 ¹³ I will punish her for the days
       she burned incense to the Baals;
       she decked herself with rings and jewelry,
       and went after her lovers,
       but me she forgot,"
       declares the LORD.

 ¹⁴ "Therefore I am now going to allure her;
       I will lead her into the desert
       and speak tenderly to her.

 ¹⁵ There I will give her back her vineyards,
       and will make the Valley of Achor ^[d] a door of hope.
       There she will sing ^[e] as in the days of her youth,
       as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

 ¹⁶ "In that day," declares the LORD,
       "you will call me 'my husband';
       you will no longer call me 'my master. ^[f] '

 ¹⁷ I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips;
       no longer will their names be invoked.

 ¹⁸ In that day I will make a covenant for them
       with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air
       and the creatures that move along the ground.
       Bow and sword and battle
       I will abolish from the land,
       so that all may lie down in safety.

 ¹⁹ I will betroth you to me forever;
       I will betroth you in ^[g] righteousness and justice,
       in ^[h] love and compassion.

 ²⁰ I will betroth you in faithfulness,
       and you will acknowledge the LORD.

 ²¹ "In that day I will respond,"
       declares the LORD—
       "I will respond to the skies,
       and they will respond to the earth;

 ²² and the earth will respond to the grain,
       the new wine and oil,
       and they will respond to Jezreel. ^[i]

 ²³ I will plant her for myself in the land;
       I will show my love to the one I called 'Not my loved one. ^[j] '
       I will say to those called 'Not my people, ^[k] ' 'You are my people';
       and they will say, 'You are my God.' "

Hosea 3

Hosea's Reconciliation With His Wife

 ² So I bought her for fifteen shekels ^[l] of silver and about a homer and a lethek ^[m] of barley. ³ Then I told her, "You are to live with ^[n] me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will live with ^[o] you."

 ⁴ For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or idol. ⁵ Afterward the Israelites will return and seek the LORD their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the LORD and to his blessings in the last days.

Hosea 4

The Charge Against Israel

 ² There is only cursing, ^[p] lying and murder,
       stealing and adultery;
       they break all bounds,
       and bloodshed follows bloodshed.

 ³ Because of this the land mourns, ^[q]
       and all who live in it waste away;
       the beasts of the field and the birds of the air
       and the fish of the sea are dying.

 ⁴ "But let no man bring a charge,
       let no man accuse another,
       for your people are like those
       who bring charges against a priest.

 ⁵ You stumble day and night,
       and the prophets stumble with you.
       So I will destroy your mother-

 ⁶ my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.
       "Because you have rejected knowledge,
       I also reject you as my priests;
       because you have ignored the law of your God,
       I also will ignore your children.

 ⁷ The more the priests increased,
       the more they sinned against me;
       they exchanged ^[r] their ^[s] Glory for something disgraceful.

 ⁸ They feed on the sins of my people
       and relish their wickedness.

 ⁹ And it will be: Like people, like priests.
       I will punish both of them for their ways
       and repay them for their deeds.

 ¹⁰ "They will eat but not have enough;
       they will engage in prostitution but not increase,
       because they have deserted the LORD
       to give themselves ¹¹ to prostitution,
       to old wine and new,
       which take away the understanding ¹² of my people.
       They consult a wooden idol
       and are answered by a stick of wood.
       A spirit of prostitution leads them astray;
       they are unfaithful to their God.

 ¹³ They sacrifice on the mountaintops
       and burn offerings on the hills,
       under oak, poplar and terebinth,
       where the shade is pleasant.
       Therefore your daughters turn to prostitution
       and your daughters-in-law to adultery.

 ¹⁴ "I will not punish your daughters
       when they turn to prostitution,
       nor your daughters-in-law
       when they commit adultery,
       because the men themselves consort with harlots
       and sacrifice with shrine prostitutes—
       a people without understanding will come to ruin!

 ¹⁵ "Though you commit adultery, O Israel,
       let not Judah become guilty.
       "Do not go to Gilgal;
       do not go up to Beth Aven. ^[t]
       And do not swear, 'As surely as the LORD lives!'

 ¹⁶ The Israelites are stubborn,
       like a stubborn heifer.
       How then can the LORD pasture them
       like lambs in a meadow?

 ¹⁷ Ephraim is joined to idols;
       leave him alone!

 ¹⁸ Even when their drinks are gone,
       they continue their prostitution;
       their rulers dearly love shameful ways.

 ¹⁹ A whirlwind will sweep them away,
       and their sacrifices will bring them shame.

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Revelation 1

Prologue

Greetings and doxology

   Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits^[a] before his throne, ⁵and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

   To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, ⁶and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.
 ⁷Look, he is coming with the clouds,
      and every eye will see him,
   even those who pierced him;
      and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen.

 ⁸"I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, "who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty."

One like a Son of Man

 ¹²I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, ¹³and among the lampstands was someone "like a son of man,"^[b]dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. ¹⁴His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. ¹⁵His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. ¹⁶In his right hand he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.

 ¹⁷When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: "Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. ¹⁸I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.

 ¹⁹"Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now and what will take place later. ²⁰The mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and of the seven golden lampstands is this: The seven stars are the angels^[c] of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.