Hosea 12

¹²Ephraim surrounds Me with lies, the house of Israel with deceit; but Judah still walks with God and is faithful to the Holy One.

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.

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.

²²The wind will drive away all your shepherds, and your lovers will go into captivity. Then you will be ashamed and humiliated because of all your wickedness.

¹⁰Even if it is transplanted, will it flourish? Will it not completely wither when the east wind strikes? It will wither on the bed where it sprouted.’”

²“Does a wise man answer with empty counsel or fill his belly with the hot east wind?

²Hear, O mountains, the Lord’s indictment, you enduring foundations of the earth. For the Lord has a case against His people, and He will argue it against Israel:

⁶I will send him against a godless nation; I will dispatch him against a people destined for My rage, to take spoils and seize plunder, and to trample them down like clay in the streets.

¹Hear the word of the Lord, O children of Israel, for the Lord has a case against the people of the land: “There is no truth, no loving devotion, and no knowledge of God in the land!

³¹The tumult will resound to the ends of the earth because the Lord brings a charge against the nations. He brings judgment on all mankind and puts the wicked to the sword,’” declares the Lord.

⁷the Lord will surely bring against them the mighty floodwaters of the Euphrates—the king of Assyria and all his pomp. It will overflow its channels and overrun its banks.

⁸It will pour into Judah, swirling and sweeping over it, reaching up to the neck; its spreading streams will cover your entire land, O Immanuel!

¹³Though they offer sacrifices as gifts to Me, and though they eat the meat, the Lord does not accept them. Now He will remember their iniquity and punish their sins: They will return to Egypt.

²⁶After this, his brother came out grasping Esau’s heel; so he was named Jacob. And Isaac was sixty years old when the twins were born.

¹¹Yet before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad, in order that God’s plan of election might stand,

¹⁶Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power to prevail.

¹⁷Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years.

²⁴So Jacob was left all alone, and there a man wrestled with him until daybreak.

²⁵When the man saw that he could not overpower Jacob, he struck the socket of Jacob’s hip and dislocated it as they wrestled.

¹⁵Jacob called the place where God had spoken with him Bethel.

¹⁷After that, we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord.

¹“Behold, I will send My messenger, who will prepare the way before Me. Then the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to His temple—the Messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight—see, He is coming,” says the Lord of Hosts.

¹³When God made His promise to Abraham, since He had no one greater to swear by, He swore by Himself,

¹⁴saying, “I will surely bless you and multiply your descendants.”

¹⁵Then he blessed Joseph and said: “May the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day,

⁹After Jacob had returned from Paddan-aram, God appeared to him again and blessed him.

¹⁰And God said to him, “Though your name is Jacob, you will no longer be called Jacob. Instead, your name will be Israel.” So God named him Israel.

¹⁵God also told Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ This is My name forever, and this is how I am to be remembered in every generation.

¹³Your name, O Lord, endures forever, Your renown, O Lord, through all generations.

⁸I am the Lord; that is My name! I will not yield My glory to another or My praise to idols.

¹⁶When Jacob woke up, he said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was unaware of it.”

³⁰So Jacob named the place Peniel, saying, “Indeed, I have seen God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”

⁸He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?

⁷But as for me, I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation. My God will hear me.

¹Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled by your iniquity.

²⁵The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him.

²⁶It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

¹Come, let us return to the Lord. For He has torn us to pieces, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bind up our wounds.

²After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in His presence.

¹³For judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

¹⁰Can I forget any longer, O house of the wicked, the treasures of wickedness and the short ephah, which is accursed?

¹¹Can I excuse dishonest scales or bags of false weights?

¹Dishonest scales are an abomination to the Lord, but an accurate weight is His delight.

⁵asking, “When will the New Moon be over, that we may sell grain? When will the Sabbath end, that we may market wheat? Let us reduce the ephah and increase the shekel; let us cheat with dishonest scales.

⁶Let us buy the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the chaff with the wheat!”

³⁵You must not use dishonest measures of length, weight, or volume.

³⁶You shall maintain honest scales and weights, an honest ephah, and an honest hin. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.

¹Then I said: “Hear now, O leaders of Jacob, you rulers of the house of Israel. Should you not know justice?

²You hate good and love evil. You tear the skin from my people and strip the flesh from their bones.

⁹Those who want to be rich, however, fall into temptation and become ensnared by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction.

¹⁰For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. By craving it, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.

¹⁷You say, ‘I am rich; I have grown wealthy and need nothing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.

¹⁰Place no trust in extortion or false hope in stolen goods. If your riches increase, do not set your heart upon them.

¹⁷You might say in your heart, “The power and strength of my hands have made this wealth for me.”

²⁰This is the way of an adulteress: She eats and wipes her mouth and says, ‘I have done nothing wrong.’

¹³For he says: ‘By the strength of my hand I have done this, and by my wisdom, for I am clever. I have removed the boundaries of nations and plundered their treasures; like a mighty one I subdued their rulers.

¹⁴My hand reached as into a nest to seize the wealth of the nations. Like one gathering abandoned eggs, I gathered all the earth. No wing fluttered, no beak opened or chirped.’”

¹²There is a generation of those who are pure in their own eyes and yet unwashed of their filth.

⁴Yet I am the Lord your God ever since the land of Egypt; you know no God but Me, for there is no Savior besides Me.

⁴⁰On the first day you are to gather the fruit of majestic trees, the branches of palm trees, and the boughs of leafy trees and of willows of the brook. And you are to rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days.

⁴¹You are to celebrate this as a feast to the Lord for seven days each year. This is a permanent statute for the generations to come; you are to celebrate it in the seventh month.

²he said to Nathan the prophet, “Here I am, living in a house of cedar, while the ark of God remains in a tent.”

¹⁵and that they should proclaim this message and spread it throughout their towns and in Jerusalem, saying, “Go out to the hill country and bring back branches of olive, wild olive, myrtle, palm, and other leafy trees, to make booths, as it is written.”

¹⁶And the people went out, brought back branches, and made booths on their own rooftops, in their courtyards, in the courts of the house of God, and in the squares by the Water Gate and by the Gate of Ephraim.

¹⁶Then all the survivors from the nations that came against Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, and to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles.

¹⁷And should any of the families of the earth not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, then the rain will not fall on them.

¹⁰I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of Egypt. Open wide your mouth, and I will fill it.

¹³Yet through all His prophets and seers, the Lord warned Israel and Judah, saying, “Turn from your wicked ways and keep My commandments and statutes, according to the entire Law that I commanded your fathers and delivered to you through My servants the prophets.”

⁴⁹Then I said, “Ah, Lord God, they are saying of me, ‘Is he not just telling parables?’”

²⁵From the day your fathers came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have sent you all My servants the prophets again and again.

²⁸And afterward, I will pour out My Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.

¹This is what the Lord says: “Go and buy a clay jar from a potter. Take some of the elders of the people and leaders of the priests,

²the Lord had already spoken through Isaiah son of Amoz, saying, “Go, remove the sackcloth from your waist and the sandals from your feet.” And Isaiah did so, walking around naked and barefoot.

³Then the Lord said, “Just as My servant Isaiah has gone naked and barefoot for three years as a sign and omen against Egypt and Cush,

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!’

⁸Gilead is a city of evildoers, tracked with footprints of blood.

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

¹⁵All their evil appears at Gilgal, for there I hated them. I will drive them from My house for the wickedness of their deeds. I will no longer love them; all their leaders are rebellious.

¹Israel was a luxuriant vine, yielding fruit for himself. The more his fruit increased, the more he increased the altars. The better his land produced, the better he made the sacred pillars.

⁹The Israelites secretly did things against the Lord their God that were not right. From watchtower to fortified city, they built high places in all their cities.

¹⁰They set up for themselves sacred pillars and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every green tree.

¹⁸Since Jacob loved Rachel, he answered, “I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.”

¹⁹Laban replied, “Better that I give her to you than to another. Stay here with me.”

⁴¹Thus for twenty years I have served in your household—fourteen years for your two daughters and six years for your flocks—and you have changed my wages ten times!

¹So Isaac called for Jacob and blessed him. “Do not take a wife from the Canaanite women,” he commanded.

²“Go at once to Paddan-aram, to the house of your mother’s father Bethuel, and take a wife from among the daughters of Laban, your mother’s brother.

⁴³So now, my son, obey my voice and flee at once to my brother Laban in Haran.

⁵and you are to declare before the Lord your God, “My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down to Egypt few in number and lived there and became a great nation, mighty and numerous.

²⁷“What is your name?” the man asked. “Jacob,” he replied.

²⁸Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men, and you have prevailed.”

²²For Moses said, ‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brothers. You must listen to Him in everything He tells you.

²³Everyone who does not listen to Him will be completely cut off from among his people.’

²⁰You led Your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

⁵⁰Then all the Israelites did this—they did just as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron.

⁵¹And on that very day the Lord brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt by their divisions.

³⁵This Moses, whom they had rejected with the words, ‘Who made you ruler and judge?’ is the one whom God sent to be their ruler and redeemer through the angel who appeared to him in the bush.

³⁶He led them out and performed wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, at the Red Sea, and for forty years in the wilderness.

¹¹Then His people remembered the days of old, the days of Moses. Where is He who brought them through the sea with the shepherds of His flock? Where is the One who set His Holy Spirit among them,

¹²who sent His glorious arm to lead them by the right hand of Moses, who divided the waters before them to gain for Himself everlasting renown,

³So Moses told the people, “Remember this day, the day you came out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; for the Lord brought you out of it by the strength of His hand. And nothing leavened shall be eaten.

¹³He engages in usury and takes excess interest. Will this son live? He will not! Since he has committed all these abominations, he will surely die; his blood will be on his own head.

¹⁸Then he will turn his face to the coastlands and capture many of them. But a commander will put an end to his reproach and will turn it back upon him.

⁷All this happened because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. They had worshiped other gods

⁸and walked in the customs of the nations that the Lord had driven out before the Israelites, as well as in the practices introduced by the kings of Israel.

³⁷You will become an object of horror, scorn, and ridicule among all the nations to which the Lord will drive you.

¹⁶They turn, but not to the Most High; they are like a faulty bow. Their leaders will fall by the sword for the cursing of their tongue; for this they will be ridiculed in the land of Egypt.

²“Son of man, there were two women, daughters of the same mother,

³and they played in Egypt, prostituting themselves from their youth. Their breasts were fondled there, and their virgin bosoms caressed.