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God Commands Hosea to Start a Family
1 The word of Yahweh that came to Hosea son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, the kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.
2 At the beginning when Yahweh spoke[a] through Hosea,
Yahweh said to Hosea,
“Go, take for yourself a wife and children of whoredom,
because the land commits great whoredom
forsaking Yahweh.”[b]
3 So he went and took Gomer daughter of Diblaim,
and she conceived and bore him a son.
4 And Yahweh said to him,
“Name him[c] Jezreel;[d]
because in a little while I will punish[e] the house of Jehu[f]
for the blood[g] of Jezreel,[h]
and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.[i]
5 On that day[j]
I will break the bow of Israel
in the Valley of Jezreel.”
6 And she conceived again and bore a daughter, and he[k] said to him,
“Name her[l] Lo-ruhamah,[m]
for I will no longer have pity
on the house of Israel
or forgive them.[n]
7 But I will have pity on the house of Judah
and I will save them by Yahweh their God,
and will not deliver them
by bow, sword, war,
horses, or horsemen.
8 And when she had weaned Lo-ruhamah,[o] she conceived and bore a son.
9 And he[p] said, “Name him[q] Lo-ammi,[r]
for you are not my people
and I am not your God.[s]
10 [t] The number of the children of Israel
will be like the sand of the sea
that cannot be measured or counted;
and in the place where it is said to them,
“You are not my people,”
it will be said to them,
“Children of the living God.”
11 Then the children of Judah
and Israel will be gathered together,
and they will appoint for themselves
one head;
and they will take possession of[u] the land,
for great is the day of Jezreel.[v]
The Unfaithful Wife
2 Say to your brother,[w] “Ammi,”[x]
and to your sister,[y] “Ruhamah.”[z]
2 Plead with your mother, plead—
because she is not my wife,
and I am not her husband.
Let her put away her whoring from before her,[aa]
and her adultery from between her breasts.
3 Lest I strip her naked
and expose her like the day when she was born;
I will make her like the desert
and turn her into parched land;
I will kill her with thirst.
4 And I will not have pity on her children,
because they are children of whoredom.
5 Because their mother was unfaithful;[ab]
she who conceived them has acted shamefully,
for she said:
“I will go after my lovers,
the ones who give me my bread, my water,
my wool, and my flax,
my oil, and my drink.”
6 Therefore, Look!
I am going to hedge her path[ac] with thorns,[ad]
and I will build a stone wall, a stone wall against her,
and she will not find her paths.
7 Then she will pursue her lovers,[ae]
but she will not overtake them;
she will seek them and not find them;
and she will say, “I will go
and return to my first husband
because it was better for me then than now.”
8 But she did not know
that it was I who gave her
grain, new wine, and oil,
and who gave her silver in abundance,
and gold which they made into a Baal.
9 Therefore I will take again
my grain in its time,
and my wine in its season;
and I will take away my wool and my flax,
which were to cover her nakedness.
10 And now I will uncover her nakedness
before the eyes of her lovers,
and no one will rescue her from my hand.
11 And I will put an end to all her mirth,
her festivals,[af] her new moons,[ag] and her Sabbaths,[ah]
and all her appointed festivals;[ai]
12 and I will lay waste to her vines[aj] and her fig trees,[ak]
of which she said,
“They are my payment for prostitution,
which my lovers gave to me.”
I will make them a forest,
and the wild animals[al] of the field will devour them.
13 I will punish her[am] for the days of the Baals,
to whom she burns incense,
and she decked herself with her ornamental ring and jewelry,
and she went after her lovers, and forgot me
—a declaration of Yahweh.
14 Therefore, Look! I am going to allure her
and bring her into the desert,
and I will speak tenderly to her.[an]
15 From there I will give her
her vineyards,
and the Valley of Achor as a doorway of hope.
And there she will respond,
as in the days of her youth,
just as in the day of her coming out of
the land of Egypt.
16 And on that day—[ao]
a declaration of Yahweh—
you will call me, “My husband;”[ap]
you will no longer call me, “My Baal.”[aq]
17 I will remove the names
of the Baals from her mouth,
and they will no longer be mentioned by their name.
18 I will make a covenant for them on that day,
with the animals[ar] of the field,
with the birds[as] of the heaven, and
with the creeping things[at] of the ground;
the bow, the sword, and the war I will abolish from the land, and I will let them lie down in safety.
19 And I will take you as my wife forever;
I will take you as a wife for myself in righteousness and in justice,
in steadfast love and in mercy.
20 I will take you as my wife[au] in faithfulness,
and you will know Yahweh.
21 On that day I will answer, declares Yahweh,[av]
I will answer the heavens,
and they will answer the earth.
22 And the earth will answer
the grain, the wine, and the oil,
and they will answer Jezreel.[aw]
23 I will sow her for myself in the land;
I will have pity on Lo-ruhama;[ax]
I will say to Lo-ammi,[ay]
“You are my people,”
and he himself will say, “you are my God.”
Another Symbolic Marriage
3 And Yahweh said to me again,
“Go, love a woman
who has a lover[az] and is committing adultery,
just like the love of Yahweh for the children of Israel,
but they are turning to other gods
and love raisin cakes.”
2 So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver
and a homer of barely and a measure of wine.[ba]
3 And I said to her,
“You must remain as mine[bb] for many days,
and you will not play the whore;
you will not belong[bc] to a man,
and I will belong to you.”
4 The children of Israel will remain for many days
without a king and prince,
without sacrifice and stone pillar, ephod and teraphim.
5 Afterward the children of Israel will return
and seek Yahweh their God and David their king.
They will come in fear to Yahweh
and to his goodness at the end of days.
5 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been fathered by God, and everyone who loves the father[a] also loves the child fathered by him. 2 By this we know that we love the children of God: whenever we love God and keep his commandments. 3 For this is the love of God: that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, 4 because everyone who is fathered by God conquers the world.
God Has Given Us Eternal Life in the Son
And this is the victory which has conquered the world: our faith. 5 Now who is the one who conquers the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? 6 This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ, not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7 For there are three that testify,[b] 8 the Spirit and the water and the blood, and the three are in agreement[c].
9 If we receive the testimony of people, the testimony of God is greater, because this is the testimony of God that he has testified concerning his Son. 10 (The one who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. The one who does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has testified concerning his Son.) 11 And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 The one who has the Son has the life; the one who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.
Our Assurance of Eternal Life
13 These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life.
14 And this is the confidence that we have before him: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked from him. 16 If anyone should see his brother sinning a sin not leading to death, he should ask, and he will grant life to him, to those who sin not leading to death. (There is a sin leading to death; I do not say that he should ask about that. 17 All unrighteousness is sin, and there is a sin not leading to death.)
18 We know that everyone who is fathered by God does not sin, but the one fathered by God, he protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. 19 We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. 20 And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, in order that we may know the one who is true, and we are in the one who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. This one is the true God and eternal life. 21 Little children, guard yourselves from idols.
Thanksgiving for Yahweh’s Help
A song of ascents. Of David.[a]
124 “If it had not been Yahweh who was on our side,”
do let Israel say,
2 “If it had not been Yahweh who was on our side,
when men rose up against us,
3 then they would have swallowed us alive,
when their anger was kindled against us.
4 Then the waters would have flooded over us,
the torrent would have passed over our soul.
5 Then over our soul would have passed
the raging waters.”
6 Blessed be Yahweh,
who has not made[b] us prey for their teeth.
7 Our soul has escaped like a bird
from the snare of fowlers.
The snare is broken, and we have escaped.
8 Our help is in the name of Yahweh,
maker of heaven and earth.
5 A strong man who flatters his neighbor
is spreading a net for his feet.
6 In transgression, an evil man is a snare,
but the righteous will sing and rejoice.[a]
7 The righteous knows the case of the poor,
but the wicked does not understand knowledge.
8 Men of scoffing set a city aflame,
but the wise turn away wrath.
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