Hosea 14

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.

¹²“Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, weeping, and mourning.”

¹³So rend your hearts and not your garments, and return to the Lord your God. For He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion. And He relents from sending disaster.

⁶But you must return to your God; maintain love and justice, and always wait on your God.

⁶At the command of the king, the couriers went throughout Israel and Judah with letters from the king and his officials, which read: “Children of Israel, return to the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, so that He may return to those of you who remain, who have escaped the grasp of the kings of Assyria.

⁷Do not be like your fathers and brothers who were unfaithful to the Lord, the God of their fathers, so that He made them an object of horror, as you can see.

³So tell the people that this is what the Lord of Hosts says: ‘Return to Me, declares the Lord of Hosts, and I will return to you, says the Lord of Hosts.’

⁴Do not be like your fathers, to whom the former prophets proclaimed that this is what the Lord of Hosts says: ‘Turn now from your evil ways and deeds.’ But they did not listen or pay attention to Me, declares the Lord.

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

⁷Let the wicked man forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that He may have compassion, and to our God, for He will freely pardon.

¹⁵Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that confess His name.

²Wash me clean of my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

³For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.

³¹Suppose someone says to God, ‘I have endured my punishment; I will offend no more.

³²Teach me what I cannot see; if I have done wrong, I will not do it again.’

¹⁸Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity and passes over the transgression of the remnant of His inheritance—who does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in loving devotion?

¹⁹He will again have compassion on us; He will vanquish our iniquities. You will cast out all our sins into the depths of the sea.

²¹Why do You not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity? For soon I will lie down in the dust; You will seek me, but I will be no more.”

⁵But you know that Christ appeared to take away sins, and in Him there is no sin.

¹⁴But You have regarded trouble and grief; You see to repay it by Your hand. The victim entrusts himself to You; You are the helper of the fatherless.

⁵A father of the fatherless and a defender of widows is God in His holy habitation.

¹Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in their abundance of chariots and in their multitude of horsemen. They do not look to the Holy One of Israel; they do not seek the Lord.

¹⁸I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

¹⁷For I will remove from her lips the names of the Baals; no longer will their names be invoked.

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.

¹⁸I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will guide him and restore comfort to him and his mourners,

²²“Return, O faithless children, and I will heal your faithlessness.” “Here we are. We come to You, for You are the Lord our God.

¹In that day you will say: “O Lord, I will praise You. Although You were angry with me, Your anger has turned away, and You have comforted me.

⁴But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,

⁵made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our trespasses. It is by grace you have been saved!

¹⁷The Lord your God is among you; He is mighty to save. He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you with His love; He will rejoice over you with singing.”

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.

²It will bloom profusely and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon. They will see the glory of the Lord, the splendor of our God.

⁶In the days to come, Jacob will take root. Israel will bud and blossom and fill the whole world with fruit.

¹⁷so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. Then you, being rooted and grounded in love,

²⁸And why do you worry about clothes? Consider how the lilies of the field grow: They do not labor or spin.

¹⁹My roots will spread out to the waters, and the dew will rest nightly on my branches.

¹⁹Your dead will live; their bodies will rise. Awake and sing, you who dwell in the dust! For your dew is like the dew of the morning, and the earth will bring forth her dead.

⁸But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in the loving devotion of God forever and ever.

³Your wife will be like a fruitful vine flourishing within your house, your sons like olive shoots sitting around your table.

¹⁶If the first part of the dough is holy, so is the whole batch; if the root is holy, so are the branches.

¹⁷Now if some branches have been broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others to share in the nourishment of the olive root,

¹⁸I have all I need and more, now that I have received your gifts from Epaphroditus. They are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, well-pleasing to God.

¹⁴But thanks be to God, who always leads us triumphantly as captives in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of Him.

¹⁵For we are to God the sweet aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.

²⁷So he came near and kissed him. When Isaac smelled his clothing, he blessed him and said: “Ah, the smell of my son is like the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed.

¹He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.

²⁵Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me will live, even though he dies.

³⁶You fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.

³⁷And what you sow is not the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or something else.

¹Behold, a king will reign in righteousness, and princes will rule with justice.

²Each will be like a shelter from the wind, a refuge from the storm, like streams of water in a dry land, like the shadow of a great rock in an arid land.

²³I will plant it on the mountain heights of Israel so that it will bear branches; it will yield fruit and become a majestic cedar. Birds of every kind will nest under it, taking shelter in the shade of its branches.

⁵I will be like the dew to Israel; he will blossom like the lily and take root like the cedars of Lebanon.

³²Teach me what I cannot see; if I have done wrong, I will not do it again.’

¹⁷Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, with whom there is no change or shifting shadow.

¹³Instead of the thornbush, the cypress will grow, and instead of the brier, the myrtle will spring up; this will make a name for the Lord, an everlasting sign, never to be destroyed.”

²⁰So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still in the distance, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him.

³For you have spent enough time in the past carrying out the same desires as the Gentiles: living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing, and detestable idolatry.

⁴Because of this, they consider it strange of you not to plunge with them into the same flood of reckless indiscretion, and they heap abuse on you.

¹³For it is God who works in you to will and to act on behalf of His good purpose.

²⁹The way of the Lord is a refuge to the upright, but destruction awaits those who do evil.

⁴³Let him who is wise pay heed to these things and consider the loving devotion of the Lord.

⁴⁷Whoever belongs to God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”

¹⁰Many will be purified, made spotless, and refined, but the wicked will continue to act wickedly. None of the wicked will understand, but the wise will understand.

⁵let the wise listen and gain instruction, and the discerning acquire wise counsel

⁶by understanding the proverbs and parables, the sayings and riddles of the wise.

⁷The Law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is trustworthy, making wise the simple.

⁸The precepts of the Lord are right, bringing joy to the heart; the commandments of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes.