Hosea 1-3

Daniel 12 Hosea 4

Hosea 1-3 Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)

1 The word of the Lord that came to Hosea son of Beeri during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and of Jeroboam son of Jehoash, king of Israel.

Hosea’s Marriage and Children

²When the Lord first spoke to Hosea, He said this to him:

Go and marry a promiscuous wife
and have children of promiscuity,
for the land is committing blatant acts of promiscuity
by abandoning the Lord.

³So he went and married Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. ⁴Then the Lord said to him:

Name him Jezreel, for in a little while
I will bring the bloodshed of Jezreel
on the house of Jehu
and put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.
⁵On that day I will break the bow of Israel
in the Valley of Jezreel.^[a]

⁶She conceived again and gave birth to a daughter, and the Lord said to him:

Name her No Compassion,^[b]
for I will no longer have compassion
on the house of Israel.
I will certainly take them away.
⁷But I will have compassion on the house of Judah,
and I will deliver them by the Lord their God.
I will not deliver them by bow, sword, or war,
or by horses and cavalry.

⁸After Gomer had weaned No Compassion, she conceived and gave birth to a son. ⁹Then the Lord said:

Name him Not My People,^[c]
for you are not My people,
and I will not be your God.^[d]
¹⁰^[e]Yet the number of the Israelites
will be like the sand of the sea,
which cannot be measured or counted.
And in the place where they were told:
You are not My people,
they will be called: Sons of the living God.
¹¹And the Judeans and the Israelites
will be gathered together.
They will appoint for themselves a single ruler
and go up from^[f] the land.
For the day of Jezreel will be great.
2 ^[g]Call^[h] your brothers: My People
and your sisters: Compassion.

Israel’s Adultery Rebuked

²Rebuke your mother; rebuke her.
For she is not My wife and I am not her husband.
Let her remove the promiscuous look from her face
and her adultery from between her breasts.
³Otherwise, I will strip her naked
and expose her as she was on the day of her birth.
I will make her like a desert
and like a parched land,
and I will let her die of thirst.
⁴I will have no compassion on her children
because they are the children of promiscuity.
⁵Yes, their mother is promiscuous;
she conceived them and acted shamefully.
For she thought, “I will go after my lovers,
the men who give me my food and water,
my wool and flax, my oil and drink.”
⁶Therefore, this is what I will do:
I will block her^[i] way with thorns;
I will enclose her with a wall,
so that she cannot find her paths.
⁷She will pursue her lovers but not catch them;
she will seek them but not find them.
Then she will think,
“I will go back to my former husband,
for then it was better for me than now.”
⁸She does not recognize
that it is I who gave her the grain,
the new wine, and the oil.
I lavished silver and gold on her,
which they used for Baal.
⁹Therefore, I will take back My grain in its time
and My new wine in its season;
I will take away My wool and linen,
which were to cover her nakedness.
¹⁰Now I will expose her shame
in the sight of her lovers,
and no one will rescue her from My hands.
¹¹I will put an end to all her celebrations:
her feasts, New Moons, and Sabbaths—
all her festivals.
¹²I will devastate her vines and fig trees.
She thinks that these are her wages
that her lovers have given her.
I will turn them into a thicket,
and the wild animals will eat them.
¹³And I will punish her for the days of the Baals
when she burned incense to them,
put on her rings and jewelry,
and went after her lovers,
but forgot Me.
This is the Lord’s declaration.

Israel’s Adultery Forgiven

¹⁴Therefore, I am going to persuade her,
lead her to the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to her.^[j]
¹⁵There I will give her vineyards back to her
and make the Valley of Achor^[k]
into a gateway of hope.
There she will respond as she did
in the days of her youth,
as in the day she came out of the land of Egypt.
¹⁶In that day—
this is the Lord’s declaration—
you will call Me, “My husband,”
and no longer call Me, “My Baal.”^[l]
¹⁷For I will remove the names of the Baals
from her mouth;
they will no longer be remembered by their names.
¹⁸On that day I will make a covenant for them
with the wild animals, the birds of the sky,
and the creatures that crawl on the ground.
I will shatter bow, sword,
and weapons of war in the land^[m]
and will enable the people to rest securely.
¹⁹I will take you to be My wife forever.
I will take you to be My wife in righteousness,
justice, love, and compassion.
²⁰I will take you to be My wife in faithfulness,
and you will know Yahweh.
²¹On that day I will respond—
this is the Lord’s declaration.
I will respond to the sky,
and it will respond to the earth.
²²The earth will respond to the grain,
the new wine, and the oil,
and they will respond to Jezreel.
²³I will sow her^[n] in the land for Myself,
and I will have compassion
on No Compassion;
I will say to Not My People:
You are My people,
and he will say, “You are My God.”

Waiting for Restoration

3 Then the Lord said to me, “Go again; show love to a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, just as the Lord loves the Israelites though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes.”

²So I bought her for 15 shekels of silver and five bushels of barley.^[o]^[p] ³I said to her, “You must live with me many days. Don’t be promiscuous or belong to any man, and I will act the same way toward you.”

⁴For the Israelites must live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, and without ephod or household idols. ⁵Afterward, the people of Israel will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They will come with awe to the Lord and to His goodness in the last days.

Footnotes:

Hosea 1:5 = God sows
Hosea 1:6 Or Lo-ruhamah
Hosea 1:9 Or Lo-ammi
Hosea 1:9 Lit not be yours
Hosea 1:10 Hs 2:1 in Hb
Hosea 1:11 Or and flourish in; Hb obscure
Hosea 2:1 Hs 2:3 in Hb
Hosea 2:1 Lit Say to
Hosea 2:6 LXX, Syr; MT reads your
Hosea 2:14 Lit speak to her heart
Hosea 2:15 = Trouble
Hosea 2:16 Or My master
Hosea 2:18 Or war on the earth
Hosea 2:23 = Israel
Hosea 3:2 LXX reads barley and a measure of wine
Hosea 3:2 Lit silver, a homer of barley, and a lethek of barley

Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)

1 John 5

1 John 4 2 John 1

1 John 5 Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)

5 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Messiah has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father also loves the one born of Him. ²This is how we know that we love God’s children when we love God and obey^[a] His commands. ³For this is what love for God is: to keep His commands. Now His commands are not a burden, ⁴because whatever has been born of God conquers the world. This is the victory that has conquered the world: our faith. ⁵And who is the one who conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

The Certainty of God’s Testimony

⁶Jesus Christ—He is the One who came by water and blood, not by water only, but by water and by blood. And the Spirit is the One who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. ⁷For there are three that testify:^[b] ⁸the Spirit, the water, and the blood—and these three are in agreement. ⁹If we accept the testimony of men, God’s testimony is greater, because it is God’s testimony that He has given about His Son. ¹⁰(The one who believes in the Son of God has this testimony within him. The one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony God has given about His Son.) ¹¹And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.

¹²The one who has the Son has life. The one who doesn’t have the Son of God does not have life. ¹³I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.

Effective Prayer

¹⁴Now this is the confidence we have before Him: Whenever we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. ¹⁵And if we know that He hears whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked Him for.

¹⁶If anyone sees his brother committing a sin that does not bring death, he should ask, and God^[c] will give life to him—to those who commit sin that doesn’t bring death. There is sin^[d] that brings death. I am not saying he should pray about that. ¹⁷All unrighteousness is sin, and there is sin that does not bring death.

Conclusion

¹⁸We know that everyone who has been born of God does not sin, but the One^[e] who is born of God keeps him,^[f]^[g] and the evil one does not touch him.

¹⁹We know that we are of God, and the whole world is under the sway of the evil one.

²⁰And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know the true One.^[h] We are in the true One—that is, in His Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.

²¹Little children, guard yourselves from idols.

Footnotes:

1 John 5:2 Other mss read keep
1 John 5:7 Other mss (Vg and a few late Gk mss) read testify in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are One. ⁸And there are three who bear witness on earth:
1 John 5:16 Lit He
1 John 5:16 Or is a sin
1 John 5:18 Jesus Christ
1 John 5:18 Other mss read himself
1 John 5:18 Or the one who is born of God keeps himself
1 John 5:20 Other mss read the true God

Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)

Psalm 124

Psalm 123 Psalm 125

Psalm 124 Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)

Psalm 124

The Lord Is on Our Side

A Davidic song of ascents.

¹If the Lord had not been on our side—
let Israel say—
²If the Lord had not been on our side
when men attacked us,
³then they would have swallowed us alive
in their burning anger against us.
⁴Then the waters would have engulfed us;
the torrent would have swept over us;
⁵the raging waters would have swept over us.

⁶Praise the Lord,
who has not let us be ripped apart by their teeth.
⁷We have escaped like a bird from the hunter’s net;
the net is torn, and we have escaped.
⁸Our help is in the name of Yahweh,
the Maker of heaven and earth.