Hosea 3

¹²Go, proclaim this message toward the north: ‘Return, O faithless Israel,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will no longer look on you with anger, for I am merciful,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will not be angry forever.

¹³Only acknowledge your guilt, that you have rebelled against the Lord your God. You have scattered your favors to foreign gods under every green tree and have not obeyed My voice,’” declares the Lord.

²²Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other.

²When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, He told him, “Go, take a prostitute as your wife and have children of adultery, because this land is flagrantly prostituting itself by departing from the Lord.”

³So Hosea went and married Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.

²⁰Is not Ephraim a precious son to Me, a delightful child? Though I often speak against him, I still remember him. Therefore My heart yearns for him; I have great compassion for him,” declares the Lord.

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.

⁶For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His prized possession out of all peoples on the face of the earth.

⁷The Lord did not set His affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than the other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples.

¹²Demand a high dowry and an expensive gift, and I will give you whatever you ask. Only give me the girl as my wife!”

¹⁶If a man consecrates to the Lord a parcel of his land, then your valuation shall be proportional to the seed required for it—fifty shekels of silver for every homer of barley seed.

¹¹The ephah and the bath shall be the same quantity so that the bath will contain a tenth of a homer, and the ephah a tenth of a homer; the homer will be the standard measure for both.

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!

¹⁰For ten acres of vineyard will yield but a bath of wine, and a homer of seed only an ephah of grain.”

¹⁷If her father absolutely refuses to give her to him, the man still must pay an amount comparable to the bridal price of a virgin.

¹³and put aside the clothing of her captivity. After she has lived in your house a full month and mourned her father and mother, you may have relations with her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife.

⁵Now this man Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephod and some household idols, and ordained one of his sons as his priest.

¹⁹Now while Laban was out shearing his sheep, Rachel stole her father’s household idols.

²So he went out to meet Asa and said to him, “Listen to me, Asa and all Judah and Benjamin. The Lord is with you when you are with Him. If you seek Him, He will be found by you, but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you.

²⁷And he will confirm a covenant with many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of the temple will come the abomination that causes desolation, until the decreed destruction is poured out upon him.”

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.

¹¹And from the time the daily sacrifice is abolished and the abomination of desolation set up, there will be 1,290 days.

⁴“In those days and at that time, declares the Lord, the children of Israel and the children of Judah will come together, weeping as they come, and will seek the Lord their God.

⁵They will ask the way to Zion and turn their faces toward it. They will come and join themselves to the Lord in an everlasting covenant that will never be forgotten.

⁹Instead, they will serve the Lord their God and David their king, whom I will raise up for them.

²³I will appoint over them one shepherd, My servant David, and he will feed them. He will feed them and be their shepherd.

²⁴I, the Lord, will be their God, and My servant David will be a prince among them. I, the Lord, have spoken.

²In the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the chief of the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and all nations will stream to it.

²²I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel, and one king will rule over all of them. Then they will no longer be two nations and will never again be divided into two kingdoms.

²³They will no longer defile themselves with their idols or detestable images, or with any of their transgressions. I will save them from all their apostasies by which they sinned, and I will cleanse them. Then they will be My people, and I will be their God.

⁴Or do you disregard the riches of His kindness, tolerance, and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you to repentance?