Old/New Testament

Hosea's message

1 This is the message that the Lord gave to Hosea, the son of Beeri.^[a] He gave this message during the time that Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah were kings of Judah. It was during the time when Joash's son Jeroboam was the king of Israel.

² The Lord began to speak to Hosea with a message for his people. The Lord said to Hosea, ‘Go and marry a prostitute. She will give birth to children for you, as a prostitute. That will show how my people have not been faithful to me. They have turned away from me, the Lord, and they have served other gods.’

Hosea's wife and their children

³ So Hosea married a woman called Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim.^[b] Then Gomer became pregnant. She gave birth to a son for Hosea. ⁴ The Lord said to Hosea, ‘Call him Jezreel.^[c] This is because I will soon punish the family of Jehu. I will punish them because Jehu murdered people at Jezreel. I will cause the kingdom of Israel to come to an end. ⁵ At that time, I will completely destroy the power of Israel's army in Jezreel valley.’

⁶ Gomer became pregnant again. She gave birth to a daughter. The Lord said to Hosea, ‘Call her Lo-Ruhamah.^[d] This is because I will not continue to show love to Israel's people. I will not forgive their sins any more. ⁷ But I will continue to love the people of Judah. I will save them from the power of their enemies. I will not use weapons to do this in a battle. I will not use an army, or horses, or chariots. Instead, it will be the power of the Lord their God that saves them.’

⁸ After Lo-Ruhamah stopped drinking Gomer's milk, Gomer became pregnant again. She gave birth to another son. ⁹ Then the Lord said, ‘Call him Lo-Ammi.^[e] This is because you Israelites are not my people. I am not your God.’

A promise about Israel's future

¹⁰ In the future, nobody will be able to count the number of Israel's people. They will be as much as the sand on the shore of the sea. God has said to them, ‘You are not my people.’ But at that time, he will say to them, ‘You are children of the God who lives!’ ¹¹ Then the people of Judah and the people of Israel will come together again. They will choose a single leader to rule them. They will return to live in their own land. They will know that the day of Jezreel is a great day.

2 Then you will tell your brothers, ‘Ammi: you are my people.’ You will tell your sisters, ‘Ruhamah: he loves you.’

The Lord warns the Israelites

² My children, warn your mother!^[f] She is no longer my wife. I am not her husband. Tell her that she must stop living like a prostitute. She must stop having sex with other men instead of me. ³ If she does not return to me, I will remove all her clothes. She will have nothing to wear, like the day when she was born. She will be ashamed. Her life will be useless and empty, like a dry land that has no water. Then I will leave her to die because she has no water to drink. ⁴ I will not show love to her children, because she became pregnant with them as a prostitute. ⁵ Yes, their mother has lived as a prostitute. She became pregnant because she had sex with other men instead of with her husband. She should be ashamed. She herself said, ‘I will go and sleep with my lovers. They give me food and water. They give me wool, linen, olive oil and wine.’^[g]

⁶ So I will stop her living like that. I will put thorn bushes around her, like a wall. Then she will not be able to go anywhere that she likes. ⁷ She will run after her lovers, but she will not catch them. She will look for them, but she will not find them. Then she will say, ‘Now I will return to my husband, as before. Life was better for me then than it is now.’

⁸ She did not realize that I was the one who gave her everything that she needed. I gave her grain, wine and olive oil. I even gave her lots of silver and gold. But she used my gifts to worship Baal instead of me. ⁹ So now I will take back the grain and the new wine that I gave her at harvest time. I will take away the wool and the linen. She will have no clothes to cover her bare body. ¹⁰ I will remove her clothes for all her lovers to see her as she really is. Nobody will be able to rescue her from my power.

¹¹ I will stop the festivals that she enjoys each year. I will stop her feasts at the times of a new moon and on Sabbath days. I will stop all her parties.^{[h] 12} I will destroy her vines and her fig trees. She said that those were the things that her lovers paid to her. But I will make her gardens become like a forest. Only wild animals will eat the fruit from those trees. ¹³ I will punish her because she burned incense to the idols of Baal. I will punish her because she made herself beautiful with jewels when she went to sleep with her lovers. I will punish her because she did those things but she forgot about me.

That is what the Lord says.

The Lord still loves his people

¹⁴ But listen! One day, I will speak kind words to her. I will lead her into the wilderness. I will tell her that I love her.^{[i] 15} There, I will give her the vineyards that she had before. I will change Trouble Valley into a place where there is hope.^[j] She will be happy with me there, as she was when she was young. That was the time when she came out of Egypt.^[k]

¹⁶ The Lord says this: When that happens, you will call me, ‘My husband’. You will never again call me, ‘Baal, my master’. ¹⁷ I will never again let you speak the names of the idols of Baal.

¹⁸ At that time, I will make a promise that nothing will hurt my people. I will make an agreement with the wild animals, with the birds in the fields and with the animals that move along the ground. I will remove from their land all the weapons that soldiers use to fight wars. I will destroy their swords and their bows and arrows. I will allow my people to live safely in peace.

²¹ The Lord says this:

Hosea returns to his wife

3 Then the Lord said to me, ‘Go back to your wife and show that you love her. Do that, even though she loves another man and is not faithful to you. The Lord loves the Israelites in the same way. They turn away from him to worship other gods. They love to offer gifts of raisins to idols. But the Lord still loves them.’

² So I paid 15 pieces of silver and 50 kilograms of grain to get my wife back. ³ Then I told her, ‘You must stay at home with me for many days. You must not live as a prostitute. You must not have sex with any other man. I will also be faithful to you.’ ⁴ In the same way, the Israelites will have to live for many days without a king or any other leader. They will not be able to make sacrifices. They will not have their pillars, their ephods or their idols to help them.^{[n] 5} After that time, the Israelites will turn back to the Lord their God. They will serve their king, a descendant of King David. In the future, they will obey the Lord with fear, and they will receive his good gifts.

The Lord accuses Israel

4 Israelites, listen to the Lord's message! The Lord accuses the people who live in Israel of these bad things:^[o]

‘Nobody in the land of Israel is faithful. They have no true love. They do not want to know God. ² They curse people, they tell lies, they murder people, they rob people. They are guilty of adultery.^[p] They continue to kill more and more people. ³ Because of this, the land will become like a desert. Everyone who lives there will become weak. Everything will die: the wild animals, the birds, and even the fish in the sea.

⁴ Do not argue among yourselves or accuse one another. It is you priests who are guilty. ⁵ You are always falling over. In the day and in the night, you trip and you fall.^[q] The false prophets are the same as you. So I will destroy Israel, your mother. ⁶ The people do not know me. Because of that, they will come to an end. You refuse to respect my authority, so I will remove you as my priests. You refuse to obey the law of your God, so I will refuse to accept your children as my priests.

⁷ The more priests that there are among you, the more sins they do against me. They should have received honour as priests, but I will make them ashamed. ⁸ They get food to eat when the people bring their sin offerings to them. So the priests are happy when the people do bad things, because they get more food to eat. ⁹ The people do whatever the priests do. I will punish them all for the bad things that they do. I will give them what their sins deserve. ¹⁰ They will eat, but they will still be hungry. They will have sex with prostitutes, but they will still have no children. This will happen because they have turned away from the Lord. ¹¹ Instead, they worship other gods.

My people cannot think properly because they drink too much old wine and new wine. ¹² They ask wooden idols to tell them what to do! A stick tells them what will happen in the future! They have turned away from me and they have lost their way. They have not been faithful to me, their God, as a prostitute is not faithful to her husband. ¹³ They offer sacrifices on the tops of the mountains. They burn offerings on the hills. They do this under the oak trees, the poplar trees and the other big trees. They enjoy the shade under those trees. As a result, your daughters serve the false gods as prostitutes. Your sons' wives are also guilty of adultery. ¹⁴ But I will not punish them for those sins, because the men are just as guilty! They sleep with prostitutes. They join with prostitutes to offer sacrifices to the false gods.

All of this shows that people who cannot think properly destroy themselves.’

The people of Judah must not copy Israel's sins

¹⁵ You people of Israel are not faithful to the Lord. But do not let the people of Judah become guilty of the same sins. Do not travel to Gilgal to worship! Do not go to Beth Aven!^[r] Do not say, ‘I promise this is true, as surely as the Lord lives’. ¹⁶ Israel's people have turned against the Lord. They are like a young cow that refuses to obey its owner. So how can the Lord take care of them? Will he put them in a big field to eat the grass like lambs? ¹⁷ The people of Israel enjoy their idols. Do not go near them! ¹⁸ After they have drunk enough wine, they are happy to sleep with prostitutes. They enjoy doing things that should make them ashamed. ¹⁹ Now a strong wind will pick them up and take them away. They will become ashamed because of their sacrifices to false gods.^[s]

John's message

1 This book describes the things that God showed to Jesus Christ. He wanted Jesus to show these things to his own servants. They are events that must happen soon. Jesus sent his angel to show them to me, his servant John.

² I, John, have written about everything that God showed me. These things are a true message from God. They are the things that Jesus Christ says are true. ³ If anyone reads aloud the words of this prophecy, God will bless that person. God will also bless the people who listen to these words, if they continue to obey them. The things that are written here will soon happen.

John writes to the seven churches

⁴ I am John. I am writing to the seven churches that are in the region of Asia. I pray that God will be very kind to you. I pray that he will give you peace in your minds. God is alive now. He has always been alive. He will continue to be alive for ever.

God will help you, and the seven spirits that are in front of his throne will help you.^[a]

⁵ Jesus Christ will also help you. He always speaks a true message. He is the first person who became alive again after death.^[b] He rules the kings of the earth.

Jesus loves us and he died for us. That is how he made us free. Because of Jesus, God will not punish us for the bad things that we have done. ⁶ Jesus has brought us into his family, so that we belong to God's kingdom. He has made us priests, so that we serve his God and Father.

So we praise Jesus Christ! He will always be very great! He has power for all time. Amen. This is true!

⁸ The Lord God says, ‘I caused all things to begin and I will cause the end of all things. I have all power and authority. I am alive. I have always been alive. I will continue to be alive for ever.’

Jesus appears to John

⁹ I am John. I am a believer, as you are. I am like your brother and your friend. Because we belong to Jesus' kingdom, we are having trouble and pain. So we all need to be strong and patient, as Jesus helps us. The Roman leaders punished me because I taught God's message. I told people the true message about Jesus. That is why they sent me to Patmos island.^[d]

¹⁰ On the Lord's day, God's Spirit caused me to see and to hear things.^[e] I heard a voice speak behind me. The sound was as loud as a trumpet. ¹¹ The voice said: ‘When you see these things, write them in a book. Then you must send the book to the seven churches in these cities:

¹² I turned round to see who was speaking to me. When I turned, I saw seven gold lampstands with their lights. ¹³ In the middle of the lights, I saw someone like a son of man.^[f] He was wearing long clothes that reached down to his feet. He wore a gold belt around the top part of his body. ¹⁴ His head and his hair were white like sheep's hair. They were very white, like snow. His eyes were like fires that were burning brightly. ¹⁵ His feet shone like a metal that shines brightly in a very hot fire. When he spoke, his voice was very loud. It was like the sound of water that pours along a river very quickly. ¹⁶ He held seven stars in his right hand. A sword with two sharp edges came out of his mouth. His face was like the sun when it shines very brightly.

¹⁷ When I saw him, I fell down at his feet like a dead person. Then he put his right hand on me, and he said to me, ‘Do not be afraid! I am the one who is the first and also the last. ¹⁸ I am the one who always lives. I died once. But look! Now I am alive and I will be alive for ever. I have authority over death and over Hades, the place for dead people.^{[g] 19} So write down the things that you have seen. Write about what you see that is happening now. Also write about the things that will happen later.

²⁰ You saw seven stars that I held in my right hand. You saw seven lights in their gold lampstands. Now I will tell you what they mean. The seven stars show what the angels of the seven churches are like.^[h] The seven lights in their lampstands show what the seven churches themselves are like.’