Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

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.^{[a] 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.

²³ God will show that what I say is true! He knows my thoughts. Why did I decide not to come back to Corinth at this time? I did not come because I did not want to be angry with you. ²⁴ We are not trying to tell you what you must believe, like masters would do. You are already strong in your spirits because you trust God. So we want to help you to be really happy.

2 Because of that, I decided not to visit you again at that time. I did not want to make you sad. ² You are the only people who can make me happy. So, if I make you sad, there will be nobody to make me happy. ³ That is why I did not visit you. I wrote that letter to you instead. You are the people who should make me happy. I did not want you to make me sad when I visited you. I felt sure about all of you. I knew that, if I was happy, then all of you would be happy too.

⁴ When I wrote that letter, I was very sad and upset. I cried a lot. I did not want to make you sad. Instead, I wanted you to know that I love you very much.

⁵ Someone among you has done things that have made other people sad. That person has made me sad. But really he has made all of you much more sad than me. I do not want to say more about this than is necessary. ⁶ Most of you have agreed to punish him. That should be enough. ⁷ Now, you should forgive him. You should comfort him. If you do not do that, he may become too sad. He may not be able to think properly. ⁸ So I tell you this: Please show him that you really do love him.

⁹ When I wrote that letter to you, I wanted to know what you would do. I wanted to see if you would do everything that I told you. ¹⁰ When you forgive anyone, I also forgive that person. Whatever bad thing somebody has done, I have Christ's authority to forgive them. And I do it to help you. ¹¹ We do not want Satan to win against us. He is very clever. We know how he likes to cause us to have trouble.