Hosea 10

¹¹Though Ephraim multiplied the altars for sin, they became his altars for sinning.

¹¹Is there iniquity in Gilead? They will surely come to nothing. Do they sacrifice bulls in Gilgal? Indeed, their altars will be heaps of stones in the furrows of the field.

²¹For all the others look after their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ.

¹I will sing for my beloved a song of his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.

²He dug it up and cleared the stones and planted the finest vines. He built a watchtower in the middle and dug out a winepress as well. He waited for the vineyard to yield good grapes, but the fruit it produced was sour!

¹“You must not make idols for yourselves or set up a carved image or sacred pillar; you must not place a sculpted stone in your land to bow down to it. For I am the Lord your God.

²³They also built for themselves high places, sacred pillars, and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every green tree.

²¹Then Elijah approached all the people and said, “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him. But if Baal is God, follow him.” But the people did not answer a word.

¹³I will also cut off the carved images and sacred pillars from among you, so that you will no longer bow down to the work of your own hands.

⁴You adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever chooses to be a friend of the world renders himself an enemy of God.

⁵those who bow on the rooftops to worship the host of heaven, those who bow down and swear by the Lord but also swear by Milcom,

¹³No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

¹⁵I know your deeds; you are neither cold nor hot. How I wish you were one or the other!

¹⁶So because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to vomit you out of My mouth!

¹⁵Thus it will be done to you, O Bethel, because of your great wickedness. When the day dawns, the king of Israel will be utterly cut off.

⁷Samaria will be carried off with her king like a twig on the surface of the water.

¹¹So in My anger I gave you a king, and in My wrath I took him away.

¹⁰The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the staff from between his feet, until Shiloh comes and the allegiance of the nations is his.

⁴For the Israelites must live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, and without ephod or idol.

¹⁵At this, they shouted, “Away with Him! Away with Him! Crucify Him!” “Shall I crucify your King?” Pilate asked. “We have no king but Caesar,” replied the chief priests.

²Cursing and lying, murder and stealing, and adultery are rampant; one act of bloodshed follows another.

⁷There are those who turn justice into wormwood and cast righteousness to the ground.

¹²“Do horses gallop on the cliffs? Does one plow the sea with oxen? But you have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood—

¹³He took a member of the royal family and made a covenant with him, putting him under oath. Then he carried away the leading men of the land,

¹⁴so that the kingdom would be brought low, unable to lift itself up, surviving only by keeping his covenant.

³Shalmaneser king of Assyria attacked him, and Hoshea became his vassal and paid him tribute.

⁴But the king of Assyria discovered that Hoshea had conspired to send envoys to King So of Egypt, and that he had not paid tribute to the king of Assyria as in previous years. Therefore the king of Assyria arrested Hoshea and put him in prison.

¹⁸Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the Lord our God to go and worship the gods of those nations. Make sure there is no root among you that bears such poisonous and bitter fruit,

¹¹Ephraim’s glory will fly away like a bird, with no birth, no pregnancy, and no conception.

⁵Josiah also did away with the idolatrous priests ordained by the kings of Judah to burn incense on the high places of the cities of Judah and in the places all around Jerusalem—those who had burned incense to Baal, to the sun and moon, to the constellations, and to all the host of heaven.

⁸Blow the ram’s horn in Gibeah, the trumpet in Ramah; raise the battle cry in Beth-aven: Lead on, O Benjamin!

⁵He has rejected your calf, O Samaria. My anger burns against them. How long will they be incapable of innocence?

⁶For this thing is from Israel—a craftsman made it, and it is not God. It will be broken to pieces, that calf of Samaria.

¹⁵Though you prostitute yourself, O Israel, may Judah avoid such guilt! Do not journey to Gilgal, do not go up to Beth-aven, and do not swear on oath, ‘As surely as the Lord lives!’

²Now they sin more and more and make for themselves cast images, idols skillfully made from their silver, all of them the work of craftsmen. People say of them, “They offer human sacrifice and kiss the calves!”

³But Pharaoh’s protection will become your shame, and the refuge of Egypt’s shade your disgrace.

¹³When Ephraim saw his sickness and Judah his wound, then Ephraim turned to Assyria and sent to the great king. But he cannot cure you or heal your wound.

²⁴Yet they did not listen or incline their ear, but they followed the stubborn inclinations of their own evil hearts. They went backward and not forward.

⁸He will take even their gods captive to Egypt, with their metal images and their precious vessels of silver and gold. For some years he will stay away from the king of the North,

¹Bel crouches; Nebo cowers. Their idols weigh down beasts and cattle. The images you carry are burdensome, a load to the weary animal.

²The gods cower; they crouch together, unable to relieve the burden; but they themselves go into captivity.

²⁴From our youth, that shameful god has consumed what our fathers have worked for—their flocks and herds, their sons and daughters.

²⁵Let us lie down in our shame; let our disgrace cover us. We have sinned against the Lord our God, both we and our fathers; from our youth even to this day we have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God.”

³Surely now they will say, “We have no king, for we do not revere the Lord. What can a king do for us?”

³But the angel of the Lord said to Elijah the Tishbite, “Go up to meet the messengers of the king of Samaria and ask them, ‘Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are on your way to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron?’

¹³They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever.

¹Some time after these events, Naboth the Jezreelite owned a vineyard in Jezreel next to the palace of Ahab king of Samaria.

¹¹So in My anger I gave you a king, and in My wrath I took him away.

¹⁵Thus it will be done to you, O Bethel, because of your great wickedness. When the day dawns, the king of Israel will be utterly cut off.

¹⁶And they said to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of the One seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.

³⁰At that time ‘they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!”’

¹⁹Men will flee to caves in the rocks and holes in the ground, away from the terror of the Lord and from the splendor of His majesty, when He rises to shake the earth.

²⁸After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves and said to the people, “Going up to Jerusalem is too much for you. Here, O Israel, are your gods, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.”

²⁹One calf he set up in Bethel, and the other in Dan.

¹⁴Those who swear by the guilt of Samaria and say, ‘As surely as your god lives, O Dan,’ or, ‘As surely as the way of Beersheba lives’—they will fall, never to rise again.”

¹³and for the land of my people, overgrown with thorns and briers—even for every house of merriment in this city of revelry.

⁵And during the night, the men of Gibeah rose up against me and surrounded the house. They intended to kill me, but they abused my concubine, and she died.

⁹They have deeply corrupted themselves as in the days of Gibeah; He will remember their guilt; He will punish their sins.

²²While they were enjoying themselves, suddenly the wicked men of the city surrounded the house. Pounding on the door, they said to the old man who owned the house, “Bring out the man who came to your house, so we can have relations with him!”

²³The owner of the house went out and said to them, “No, my brothers, do not do this wicked thing! After all, this man is a guest in my house. Do not commit this outrage.

¹⁷The Israelites, apart from Benjamin, mobilized 400,000 swordsmen, each one an experienced warrior.

¹⁸The Israelites set out, went up to Bethel, and inquired of God, “Who of us shall go up first to fight against the Benjamites?” “Judah will be first,” the Lord replied.

²¹When the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, He said in His heart, “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from his youth. And never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done.

¹³Hand over the wicked men of Gibeah so we can put them to death and purge Israel of this evil.” But the Benjamites refused to heed the voice of their fellow Israelites.

¹⁴And from their cities they came together at Gibeah to go out and fight against the Israelites.

¹³And when My anger is spent and I have vented My wrath against them, I will be appeased. And when I have spent My wrath on them, they will know that I, the Lord, in My zeal have spoken.

¹⁶But for now I will send for many fishermen, declares the Lord, and they will catch them. After that I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them down on every mountain and hill, even from the clefts of the rocks.

⁹And it shall be like people, like priest. I will punish both of them for their ways and repay them for their deeds.

⁶³Just as it pleased the Lord to make you prosper and multiply, so also it will please Him to annihilate you and destroy you. And you will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess.

⁹Therefore I delivered her into the hands of her lovers, the Assyrians for whom she lusted.

⁴⁶This is what the Lord God says: ‘Bring a mob against them and consign them to terror and plunder.

¹⁶For Israel is as obstinate as a stubborn heifer. Can the Lord now shepherd them like lambs in an open meadow?

¹¹“Because you rejoice, because you sing in triumph—you who plunder My inheritance—because you frolic like a heifer treading grain and neigh like stallions,

⁴Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.

¹Then the Lord said to me, “Go show love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love to offer raisin cakes to idols.”

¹⁸For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive.

²⁴Does the plowman plow for planting every day? Does he continuously loosen and harrow the soil?

³For this is what the Lord says to the men of Judah and Jerusalem: “Break up your unplowed ground, and do not sow among the thorns.

⁴Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and remove the foreskins of your hearts, O men of Judah and people of Jerusalem. Otherwise, My wrath will break out like fire and burn with no one to extinguish it, because of your evil deeds.”

¹⁸Peacemakers who sow in peace reap the fruit of righteousness.

⁸Drip down, O heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness. Let the earth open up that salvation may sprout and righteousness spring up with it; I, the Lord, have created it.

¹⁸The wicked man earns an empty wage, but he who sows righteousness reaps a true reward.

⁶Seek the Lord while He may be found; call on Him while He is near.

³So let us know—let us press on to know the Lord. As surely as the sun rises, He will appear; He will come to us like the rain, like the spring showers that water the earth.

⁸As I have observed, those who plow iniquity and those who sow trouble reap the same.

⁷Do not be deceived: God is not to be mocked. Whatever a man sows, he will reap in return.

⁸The one who sows to please his flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; but the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.

⁸He who sows injustice will reap disaster, and the rod of his fury will be destroyed.

³¹So they will eat the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.

⁷For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. There is no standing grain; what sprouts fails to yield flour. Even if it should produce, the foreigners would swallow it up.

²⁰From the fruit of his mouth a man’s belly is filled; with the harvest from his lips he is satisfied.

²¹Life and death are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.

¹⁶Samaria will bear her guilt because she has rebelled against her God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open.

¹⁰They scoff at kings and make rulers an object of scorn. They laugh at every fortress and build up siege ramps to seize it.

⁹In the fourth year of Hezekiah’s reign, which was the seventh year of the reign of Hoshea son of Elah over Israel, Shalmaneser king of Assyria marched against Samaria and besieged it.

¹⁰And at the end of three years, the Assyrians captured it. So Samaria was captured in the sixth year of Hezekiah, which was the ninth year of Hoshea king of Israel.

¹⁶Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes, their houses will be looted, and their wives will be ravished.

¹⁷Behold, I will stir up against them the Medes, who have no regard for silver and no desire for gold.

⁵The Lord God of Hosts, He who touches the earth and it melts, and all its dwellers mourn—all the land rises like the Nile, then sinks like the river of Egypt—

³³Has the god of any nation ever delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria?

⁵The people of Samaria will fear for the calf of Beth-aven. Indeed, its people will mourn over it with its idolatrous priests—those who rejoiced in its glory—for it has been taken from them into exile.

⁹The high places of Isaac will be deserted, and the sanctuaries of Israel will be laid waste; and I will rise up against the house of Jeroboam with My sword.”

¹⁰Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent word to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel. The land cannot bear all his words,

¹³Did that which is good, then, become death to me? Certainly not! But in order that sin might be exposed as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.

⁷Samaria will be carried off with her king like a twig on the surface of the water.

³Surely now they will say, “We have no king, for we do not revere the Lord. What can a king do for us?”

¹⁴And now the Lord says, “In three years, as a hired worker counts the years, Moab’s splendor will become an object of contempt, with all her many people. And those who are left will be few and feeble.”