Hosea 1–4

1^*This is the message which the Lord gave Hosea son of Beeri during the time that Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah were kings of Judah, and Jeroboam son of Jehoash was king of Israel.

Hosea’s Wife and Children

²When the Lord first spoke to Israel through Hosea, he said to Hosea, “Go and get married; your wife will be unfaithful, and your children will be just like her.^a In the same way, my people have left me and become unfaithful.”

³So Hosea married a woman named Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim. After the birth of their first child, a son, ^4*the Lord said to Hosea, “Name him ‘Jezreel’, because it will not be long before I punish the king of Israel for the murders that his ancestor Jehu committed at Jezreel.^b I am going to put an end to Jehu’s dynasty.^{c 5}And in the Valley of Jezreel I will at that time destroy Israel’s military power.”

⁶Gomer had a second child—this time it was a daughter. The Lord said to Hosea, “Name her ‘Unloved’, because I will no longer show love to the people of Israel or forgive them. ⁷But to the people of Judah I will show love. I, the Lord their God, will save them, but I will not do it by war—with swords or bows and arrows or with horses and horsemen.”

⁸After Gomer had weaned her daughter, she became pregnant again and had another son. ⁹The Lord said to Hosea, “Name him ‘Not-my-People’, because the people of Israel are not my people, and I am not their God.”

Israel Is to Be Restored

^10*The people of Israel will become like the sand of the sea, more than can be counted or measured. Now God says to them, “You are not my people,” but the day is coming when he will say to them, “You are the children of the living God!” ¹¹The people of Judah and the people of Israel will be reunited. They will choose for themselves a single leader, and once again they will grow and prosper in their land. Yes, the day of Jezreel^d will be a great day!

2So call your fellow-Israelites “God’s People” and “Loved-by-the-Lord”.

Unfaithful Gomer—Unfaithful Israel

²My children, plead with your mother—though she is no longer a wife to me, and I am no longer her husband. Plead with her to stop her adultery and prostitution. ³If she does not, I will strip her as naked as she was on the day she was born. I will make her like a dry and barren land, and she will die of thirst. ^4–5I will not show mercy to her children; they are the children of a shameless prostitute.^e She herself said, “I will go to my lovers—they give me food and water, wool and linen, olive oil and wine.”

⁶So I am going to fence her in with thorn bushes and build a wall to block her way. ⁷She will run after her lovers but will not catch them. She will look for them but will not find them. Then she will say, “I am going back to my first husband—I was better off then than I am now.”

⁸She would never acknowledge that I am the one who gave her the corn, the wine, the olive oil, and all the silver and gold that she used in the worship of Baal. ⁹So at harvest time I will take back my gifts of corn and wine, and will take away the wool and the linen I gave her for clothing. ¹⁰I will strip her naked in front of her lovers, and no one will be able to save her from my power. ¹¹I will put an end to all her festivities—her annual and monthly festivals and her Sabbath celebrations—all her religious meetings. ¹²I will destroy her grapevines and her fig trees, which she said her lovers gave her for serving them. I will turn her vineyards and orchards into a wilderness; wild animals will destroy them. ¹³I will punish her for the times that she forgot me when she burnt incense to Baal and put on her jewellery to go chasing after her lovers. The Lord has spoken.

The ’s Love for His People

¹⁴So I am going to take her into the desert again; there I will win her back with words of love. ^15*I will give back to her the vineyards she had and make Trouble Valley a door of hope. She will respond to me there as she did when she was young, when she came from Egypt. ¹⁶Then once again she will call me her husband—she will no longer call me her Baal.^{f 17}I will never let her speak the name of Baal again.

¹⁸At that time I will make a covenant with all the wild animals and birds, so that they will not harm my people. I will also remove all weapons of war from the land, all swords and bows, and will let my people live in peace and safety.

¹⁹Israel, I will make you my wife;

I will be true and faithful;

I will show you constant love and mercy

and make you mine for ever.

²⁰I will keep my promise and make you mine,

and you will acknowledge me as Lord.

^21–22At that time I will answer the prayers of my people Israel.^g

I will make rain fall on the earth,

and the earth will produce corn and grapes and olives.

^23*I will establish my people in the land and make them prosper.

I will show love to those who were called “Unloved”,

and to those who were called “Not-my-People”

I will say, “You are my people,”

and they will answer, “You are our God.”

Hosea and the Unfaithful Woman

3The Lord said to me, “Go again^h and show your love for a woman who is committing adultery with a lover. You must love her just as I still love the people of Israel, even though they turn to other gods and like to take offerings of raisins to idols.”ⁱ

²So I paid fifteen pieces of silver and 150 kilogrammes of barley to buy her. ³I told her that for a long time she would have to wait for me without being a prostitute or committing adultery; and during this time I would wait for her.

⁴In just this way the people of Israel will have to live for a long time without kings or leaders, without sacrifices or sacred stone pillars, without idols or images to use for divination. ⁵But the time will come when the people of Israel will once again turn to the Lord their God, and to a descendant of David their king. Then they will fear the Lord and will receive his good gifts.

The ’s Accusation against Israel

4The Lord has an accusation to bring against the people who live in this land. Listen, Israel, to what he says: “There is no faithfulness or love in the land, and the people do not acknowledge me as God. ²They make promises and break them; they lie, murder, steal, and commit adultery. Crimes increase, and there is one murder after another. ³And so the land will dry up, and everything that lives on it will die. All the animals and birds, and even the fish, will die.”

The Accuses the Priests

⁴The Lord says, “Let no one accuse the people or reprimand them—my complaint is against you priests.^{j 5}Night and day you blunder on, and the prophets do no better than you. I am going to destroy Israel, your mother. ⁶My people are doomed because they do not acknowledge me. You priests have refused to acknowledge me and have rejected my teaching, and so I reject you and will not acknowledge your sons as my priests.

⁷“The more of you priests there are, the more you sin against me, and so I will turn your honour into disgrace. ⁸You grow rich from the sins of my people, and so you want them to sin more and more. ⁹You will suffer the same punishment as the people! I will punish you and make you pay for the evil you do. ¹⁰You will eat your share of the sacrifices, but still be hungry. You will worship the fertility gods, but still have no children, because you have turned away from me to follow other gods.”

The Condemns Pagan Worship

¹¹The Lord says, “Wine, both old and new, is robbing my people of their senses! ¹²They ask for revelations from a piece of wood! A stick tells them what they want to know! They have left me. Like a woman who becomes a prostitute, they have given themselves to other gods. ¹³At sacred places on the mountain tops they offer sacrifices, and on the hills they burn incense under tall, spreading trees, because the shade is so pleasant!

“As a result, your daughters serve as prostitutes, and your daughters-in-law commit adultery. ¹⁴Yet I will not punish them for this, because you yourselves go off with temple prostitutes,^k and together with them you offer pagan sacrifices. As the proverb says, ‘A people without sense will be ruined.’

¹⁵“Even though you people of Israel are unfaithful to me, may Judah not be guilty of the same thing. Don’t worship at Gilgal or Bethaven,^l or make promises there in the name of the living Lord. ¹⁶The people of Israel are as stubborn as mules. How can I feed them like lambs in a meadow? ¹⁷The people of Israel are under the spell of idols. Let them go their own way. ¹⁸After drinking much wine, they delight in their prostitution, preferring disgrace to honour. ¹⁹They will be carried away as by the wind, and they will be ashamed of their pagan sacrifices.^m