Hosea 9–12

Israel’s Punishment

9Israel, do not rejoice;

don’t shout for joy as the other nations do.

You have been like a prostitute against your God.

You love the pay of prostitutes on every threshing floor.

²But the threshing floor and the winepress will not feed the people,

and there won’t be enough new wine.

³The people will not stay in the Lord’s land.

Israel will return to being captives as they were in Egypt,

and in Assyria they will eat food that they are not allowed to eat.

⁴The Israelites will not give offerings of wine to the Lord;

they will not give him sacrifices.

Their sacrifices will be like food that is eaten at a funeral;

it is unclean, and everyone who eats it becomes unclean.

Their food will only satisfy their hunger;

they cannot sacrifice it in the Temple.

⁵What will you do then on the day of feasts

and on the day of the Lord’s festival?

⁶Even if the people are not destroyed,

Egypt will capture them;

Memphis ⁿ will bury them.

Weeds will grow over their silver treasures,

and thorns will drive them out of their tents.

⁷The time of punishment has come,

the time to pay for sins.

Let Israel know this:

You think the prophet is a fool,

and you say the spiritual person is crazy.

You have sinned very much,

and your hatred is great.

⁸Is Israel a watchman?

Are God’s people prophets?

Everywhere Israel goes, traps are set for him.

He is an enemy in God’s house.

⁹The people of Israel have gone deep into sin

as the people of Gibeah ⁿ did.

The Lord will remember the evil things they have done,

and he will punish their sins.

¹⁰“When I found Israel,

it was like finding grapes in the desert.

Your ancestors were like

finding the first figs on the fig tree.

But when they came to Baal Peor,

they began worshiping an idol,

and they became as hateful as the thing they worshiped.

¹¹Israel’s glory will fly away like a bird;

there will be no more pregnancy, no more births, no more getting pregnant.

¹²But even if the Israelites bring up children,

I will take them all away.

How terrible it will be for them

when I go away from them!

¹³I have seen Israel, like Tyre,

given a pleasant place.

But the people of Israel will soon bring out

their children to be killed.”

¹⁴Lord, give them what they should have.

What will you give them?

Make their women unable to have children;

give them dried-up breasts that cannot feed their babies.

¹⁵“The Israelites were very wicked in Gilgal,

so I have hated them there.

Because of the sinful things they have done,

I will force them to leave my land.

I will no longer love them;

their leaders have turned against me.

¹⁶Israel is beaten down;

its root is dying, and it has no fruit.

If they have more children,

I will kill the children they love.”

¹⁷God will reject them,

because they have not obeyed him;

they will wander among the nations.

Israel Will Pay for Sin

10Israel is like a large vine

that produced plenty of fruit.

As the people became richer,

they built more altars for idols.

As their land became better,

they put up better stone pillars to honor gods.

²Their heart was false,

and now they must pay for their guilt.

The Lord will break down their altars;

he will destroy their holy stone pillars.

³Then they will say, “We have no king,

because we didn’t honor the Lord.

As for the king,

he couldn’t do anything for us.”

⁴They make many false promises

and agreements which they don’t keep.

So people sue each other in court;

they are like poisonous weeds growing in a plowed field.

⁵The people from Israel are worried about

the calf-shaped idol at Beth Aven.

The people will cry about it,

and the priests will cry about it.

They used to shout for joy about its glory,

⁶but it will be carried off to Assyria

as a gift to the great king.

Israel will be disgraced,

and the people will be ashamed for not obeying.

⁷Israel will be destroyed;

its king will be like a chip of wood floating on the water.

⁸The places of false worship will be destroyed,

the places where Israel sins.

Thorns and weeds will grow up

and cover their altars.

Then they will say to the mountains, “Cover us!”

and to the hills, “Fall on us!”

⁹“Israel, you have sinned since the time of Gibeah, ⁿ

and the people there have continued sinning.

But war will surely overwhelm them in Gibeah,

because of the evil they have done there.

¹⁰When I am ready,

I will come to punish them.

Nations will come together against them,

and they will be punished for their double sins.

¹¹Israel is like a well-trained young cow

that likes to thresh grain.

I will put a yoke on her neck

and make her work hard in the field.

Israel will plow,

and Judah will break up the ground.

¹²I said, ‘Plant goodness,

harvest the fruit of loyalty,

plow the new ground of knowledge.

Look for the Lord until he comes

and pours goodness on you like water.’

¹³But you have plowed evil

and harvested trouble;

you have eaten the fruit of your lies.

Because you have trusted in your own power

and your many soldiers,

¹⁴your people will hear the noise of battle,

and all your strong, walled cities will be destroyed.

It will be like the time King Shalman

destroyed Beth Arbel in battle,

when mothers and their children were bashed to death.

¹⁵The same will happen to you, people of Bethel,

because you did so much evil.

When the sun comes up,

the king of Israel will die.

God’s Love for Israel

11“When Israel was a child, I loved him,

and I called my son out of Egypt.

²But when I called the people of Israel,

they went away from me.

They offered sacrifices to the Baals

and burned incense to the idols.

³It was I who taught Israel to walk,

and I took them by the arms,

but they did not understand

that I had healed them.

⁴I led them with cords of human kindness,

with ropes of love.

I lifted the yoke from their neck

and bent down and fed them.

⁵“The Israelites will become captives again, as they were in Egypt,

and Assyria will become their king,

because they refuse to turn back to God.

⁶War will sweep through their cities

and will destroy them

and kill them because of their wicked plans.

⁷My people have made up their minds

to turn away from me.

The prophets call them to turn to me,

but none of them honors me at all.

⁸“Israel, how can I give you up?

How can I give you away, Israel?

I don’t want to make you like Admah

or treat you like Zeboiim. ⁿ

My heart beats for you,

and my love for you stirs up my pity.

⁹I won’t punish you in my anger,

and I won’t destroy Israel again.

I am God and not a human;

I am the Holy One, and I am among you.

I will not come against you in anger.

¹⁰They will go after the Lord,

and he will roar like a lion.

When he roars,

his children will hurry to him from the west.

¹¹They will come swiftly

like birds from Egypt

and like doves from Assyria.

I will settle them again in their homes,”

says the Lord.

The Lord Is Against Israel

¹²Israel has surrounded me with lies;

the people have made evil plans.

And Judah turns against God,

the faithful Holy One.

12What Israel does is as useless as chasing the wind;

he chases the east wind all day.

They tell more and more lies

and do more and more violence.

They make agreements with Assyria,

and they send a gift of olive oil to Egypt.

²The Lord also has some things against Judah.

He will punish Israel for what they have done;

he will give them what they deserve.

³Their ancestor Jacob held on to his brother’s heel

while the two of them were being born.

When he grew to be a man,

he wrestled with God.

⁴When Jacob wrestled with the angel and won,

he cried and asked for his blessing.

Later, God met with him at Bethel

and spoke with him there.

⁵It was the Lord God All-Powerful;

the Lord is his great name.

⁶You must return to your God;

love him, do what is just,

and always trust in him as your God.

⁷The merchants use dishonest scales;

they like to cheat people.

⁸Israel said, “I am rich! I am someone with power!”

All their money will do them no good

because of the sins they have done.

⁹“But I am the Lord your God,

who brought you out of Egypt.

I will make you live in tents again

as you used to do on worship days.

¹⁰I spoke to the prophets

and gave them many visions;

through them, I taught my lessons to you.”

¹¹The people of Gilead are evil,

worth nothing.

Though people sacrifice bulls at Gilgal,

their altars will become like piles of stone

in a plowed field.

¹²Your ancestor Jacob fled to Northwest Mesopotamia

where he worked to get a wife;

he tended sheep to pay for her.

¹³Later the Lord used a prophet

to bring Jacob’s descendants out of Egypt;

he used a prophet

to take care of the Israelites.

¹⁴But the Israelites made the Lord angry when they killed other people,

and they deserve to die for their crimes.

The Lord will make them pay

for the disgraceful things they have done.