Hosea 4

²²“For My people are fools; they have not known Me. They are foolish children, without understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, but they know not how to do good.”

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:

¹³The Lord arises to contend; He stands to judge the people.

¹⁴The Lord brings this charge against the elders and leaders of His people: “You have devoured the vineyard; the plunder of the poor is in your houses.

³⁴Sober up as you ought, and stop sinning; for some of you are ignorant of God. I say this to your shame.

⁴Then I said, “They are only the poor; they have played the fool, for they do not know the way of the Lord, the justice of their God.

¹⁶Now, therefore, hear the word of the Lord. You say: ‘Do not prophesy against Israel; do not preach against the house of Isaac.’

⁹Like raiders who lie in ambush, so does a band of priests; they murder on the way to Shechem; surely they have committed atrocities.

²The godly man has perished from the earth; there is no one upright among men. They all lie in wait for blood; they hunt one another with a net.

⁷As a well gushes its water, so she pours out her evil. Violence and destruction resound in her; sickness and wounds are ever before Me.

¹⁵who killed both the Lord Jesus and their own prophets and drove us out as well. They are displeasing to God and hostile to all men,

⁶if you no longer oppress the foreigner and the fatherless and the widow, and if you no longer shed innocent blood in this place or follow other gods to your own harm,

⁷then I will let you live in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever.

⁷“Why should I forgive you? Your children have forsaken Me and sworn by gods that are not gods. I satisfied their needs, yet they committed adultery and assembled at the houses of prostitutes.

⁸They are well-fed, lusty stallions, each neighing after his neighbor’s wife.

³“I will sweep away man and beast; I will sweep away the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, and the idols with their wicked worshipers. I will cut off mankind from the face of the earth,” declares the Lord.

⁴The earth mourns and withers; the world languishes and fades; the exalted of the earth waste away.

⁵The earth is defiled by its people; they have transgressed the laws; they have overstepped the decrees and broken the everlasting covenant.

⁴He rebukes the sea and dries it up; He makes all the rivers run dry. Bashan and Carmel wither, and the flower of Lebanon wilts.

²⁰The fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the beasts of the field, every creature that crawls upon the ground, and all mankind on the face of the earth will tremble at My presence. The mountains will be thrown down, the cliffs will collapse, and every wall will fall to the ground.

¹⁶Therefore this is what the Lord, the God of Hosts, the Lord, says: “There will be wailing in all the public squares and cries of ‘Alas! Alas!’ in all the streets. The farmer will be summoned to mourn, and the mourners to wail.

⁴How long will the land mourn and the grass of every field be withered? Because of the evil of its residents, the animals and birds have been swept away, for the people have said, “He cannot see what our end will be.”

¹²But the man who acts presumptuously, refusing to listen either to the priest who stands there to serve the Lord your God, or to the judge, must be put to death. You must purge the evil from Israel.

²⁶I will make your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth, and you will be silent and unable to rebuke them, though they are a rebellious house.

¹⁷Ephraim is joined to idols; leave him alone!

¹⁸Then some said, “Come, let us make plans against Jeremiah, for the law will never be lost to the priest, nor counsel to the wise, nor an oracle to the prophet. Come, let us denounce him and pay no heed to any of his words.”

³Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye but fail to notice the beam in your own eye?

⁴How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while there is still a beam in your own eye?

¹³Therefore, the prudent keep silent in such times, for the days are evil.

²Rebuke your mother, rebuke her, for she is not My wife, and I am not her husband. Let her remove the adultery from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.

⁸I will make their widows more numerous than the sand of the sea. I will bring a destroyer at noon against the mothers of young men. I will suddenly bring upon them anguish and dismay.

²⁶But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.

²And on that day, declares the Lord of Hosts, I will erase the names of the idols from the land, and they will no longer be remembered. I will also remove the prophets and the spirit of impurity from the land.

⁴⁴Behold, all who speak in proverbs will quote this proverb about you: ‘Like mother, like daughter.’

⁴⁵You are the daughter of your mother, who despised her husband and children. You are the sister of your sisters, who despised their husbands and children. Your mother was a Hittite and your father an Amorite.

⁷The days of punishment have come; the days of retribution have arrived—let Israel know it. The prophet is called a fool, and the inspired man insane, because of the greatness of your iniquity and hostility.

⁸The prophet is Ephraim’s watchman, along with my God, yet the snare of the fowler lies on all his paths. Hostility is in the house of his God!

¹³Therefore My people will go into exile for their lack of understanding; their dignitaries are starving and their masses are parched with thirst.

²Even zeal is no good without knowledge, and he who hurries his footsteps misses the mark.

⁶For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

³And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.

⁴The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

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!

⁸‘These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me.

⁶When they had pasture, they became satisfied; when they were satisfied, their hearts became proud, and as a result they forgot Me.

¹⁹Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and their glory is in their shame. Their minds are set on earthly things.

³⁰Therefore, the Lord, the God of Israel, declares: ‘I did indeed say that your house and the house of your father would walk before Me forever. But now the Lord declares: Far be it from Me! For I will honor those who honor Me, but those who despise Me will be disdained.

¹⁰They will eat but not be satisfied; they will be promiscuous but not multiply. For they have abandoned the Lord to give themselves

⁹“So I in turn have made you despised and humiliated before all the people, because you have not kept My ways, but have shown partiality in matters of the law.”

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.

¹¹Her leaders judge for a bribe, her priests teach for a price, and her prophets practice divination for money. Yet they lean upon the Lord, saying, “Is not the Lord among us? No disaster can come upon us.”

¹¹Like ravenous dogs, they are never satisfied. They are shepherds with no discernment; they all turn to their own way, each one seeking his own gain:

¹¹who must be silenced. For the sake of dishonorable gain, they undermine entire households and teach things they should not.

²⁹Why then do you kick at My sacrifice and offering that I have prescribed for My dwelling place? You have honored your sons more than Me by fattening yourselves with the best of all the offerings of My people Israel.’

²⁶The priest who offers it shall eat it; it must be eaten in a holy place, in the courtyard of the Tent of Meeting.

¹⁰“Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would no longer kindle useless fires on My altar! I take no pleasure in you,” says the Lord of Hosts, “and I will accept no offering from your hands.

³¹The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule by their own authority. My people love it so, but what will you do in the end?

²people and priest alike, servant and master, maid and mistress, buyer and seller, lender and borrower, creditor and debtor.

¹⁴Disregard them! They are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.”

⁴Then the Lord said to Hosea, “Name him Jezreel, for soon I will bring the bloodshed of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel.

¹¹“For both prophet and priest are ungodly; even in My house I have found their wickedness,” declares the Lord.

¹²“Therefore their path will become slick; they will be driven away into the darkness and fall into it. For I will bring disaster upon them in the year of their punishment,” declares the Lord.

¹⁰Therefore I will give their wives to other men and their fields to new owners. For from the least of them to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; from prophet to priest, all practice deceit.

¹¹They dress the wound of the daughter of My people with very little care, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace at all.

¹⁴You will eat but not be satisfied, and your hunger will remain with you. What you acquire, you will not preserve; and what you save, I will give to the sword.

²⁶When I cut off your supply of bread, ten women will bake your bread in a single oven and dole out your bread by weight, so that you will eat but not be satisfied.

⁶You have planted much but harvested little. You eat but never have enough. You drink but never have your fill. You put on clothes but never get warm. You earn wages to put into a bag pierced through.”

³The words of his mouth are wicked and deceitful; he has ceased to be wise and well-doing.

⁶and those who turn back from following the Lord, neither seeking the Lord nor inquiring of Him.”

²⁵A righteous man eats to his heart’s content, but the stomach of the wicked is empty.

¹Wine is a mocker, strong drink is a brawler, and whoever is led astray by them is not wise.

³⁴But watch yourselves, or your hearts will be weighed down by dissipation, drunkenness, and the worries of life—and that day will spring upon you suddenly like a snare.

⁷These also stagger from wine and stumble from strong drink: Priests and prophets reel from strong drink and are befuddled by wine. They stumble because of strong drink, muddled in their visions and stumbling in their judgments.

³²He who commits adultery lacks judgment; whoever does so destroys himself.

⁷Surely extortion turns a wise man into a fool, and a bribe corrupts the heart.

²⁷For a prostitute is a deep pit, and an adulteress is a narrow well.

²⁸Like a robber she lies in wait and multiplies the faithless among men.

²⁷say to a tree, ‘You are my father,’ and to a stone, ‘You gave me birth.’ They have turned their backs to Me and not their faces. Yet in the time of trouble, they say, ‘Rise up and save us!’

⁴Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God, for a spirit of prostitution is within them, and they do not know the Lord.

¹⁹Woe to him who says to wood, ‘Awake!’ or to silent stone, ‘Arise!’ Can it give guidance? Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, yet there is no breath in it at all.”

³⁹These will serve as tassels for you to look at, so that you may remember all the commandments of the Lord, that you may obey them and not prostitute yourselves by following your own heart and your own eyes.

¹⁶And the Lord said to Moses, “You will soon rest with your fathers, and these people will rise up and prostitute themselves with the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake Me and break the covenant I have made with them.

¹⁸They do not comprehend or discern, for He has shut their eyes so they cannot see and closed their minds so they cannot understand.

¹⁹And no one considers in his heart, no one has the knowledge or insight to say, “I burned half of it in the fire, and I baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and I ate. Shall I make something detestable with the rest of it? Shall I bow down to a block of wood?”

⁶Now in the days of King Josiah, the Lord said to me, “Have you seen what faithless Israel has done? She has gone up on every high hill and under every green tree to prostitute herself there.

¹³Then you will know that I am the Lord, when their slain lie among their idols around their altars, on every high hill, on all the mountaintops, and under every green tree and leafy oak—the places where they offered fragrant incense to all their idols.

²⁹Surely you will be ashamed of the sacred oaks in which you have delighted; you will be embarrassed by the gardens that you have chosen.

¹⁷Therefore this is what the Lord says: ‘Your wife will become a prostitute in the city, and your sons and daughters will fall by the sword. Your land will be divided by a measuring line, and you yourself will die on pagan soil. And Israel will surely go into exile, away from their homeland.’”

²⁰“For long ago you broke your yoke and tore off your chains, saying, ‘I will not serve!’ Indeed, on every high hill and under every green tree you lay down as a prostitute.

²But the more I called Israel, the farther they departed from Me. They sacrificed to the Baals and burned incense to carved images.

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!

¹⁶Or don’t you know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.”

¹⁸They are darkened in their understanding and alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of their hearts.

⁵Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the Lord comprehend fully.

⁹Whoever is wise, let him understand these things; whoever is discerning, let him know them. For the ways of the Lord are right, and the righteous walk in them but the rebellious stumble in them.

⁷He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes that were in the house of the Lord, where the women had woven tapestries for Asherah.

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.

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.

⁴“Go to Bethel and transgress; rebel even more at Gilgal! Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three days.

⁵Do not seek Bethel or go to Gilgal; do not journey to Beersheba, for Gilgal will surely go into exile, and Bethel will come to nothing.

¹¹Have no fellowship with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.

⁸The high places of Aven will be destroyed—it is the sin of Israel; thorns and thistles will overgrow their altars. Then they will say to the mountains, “Cover us!” and to the hills, “Fall on us!”

¹¹“I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned away from following Me and has not carried out My instructions.” And Samuel was distressed and cried out to the Lord all that night.

⁶Therefore a lion from the forest will strike them down, a wolf from the desert will ravage them. A leopard will lie in wait near their cities, and everyone who ventures out will be torn to pieces. For their rebellious acts are many, and their unfaithful deeds are numerous.

¹¹But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder; they stopped up their ears from hearing.

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.

³³But I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out a sword after you as your land becomes desolate and your cities are laid waste.

⁸She saw that because faithless Israel had committed adultery, I gave her a certificate of divorce and sent her away. Yet that unfaithful sister Judah had no fear and prostituted herself as well.

¹²So I gave them up to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices.

¹¹Let the unrighteous continue to be unrighteous, and the vile continue to be vile; let the righteous continue to practice righteousness, and the holy continue to be holy.”

²But the more I called Israel, the farther they departed from Me. They sacrificed to the Baals and burned incense to carved images.

⁴But let no man contend; let no man offer reproof; for your people are like those who contend with a priest.

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!”

¹⁴Disregard them! They are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.”

¹¹Her leaders judge for a bribe, her priests teach for a price, and her prophets practice divination for money. Yet they lean upon the Lord, saying, “Is not the Lord among us? No disaster can come upon us.”

¹⁵The leech has two daughters: Give and Give. There are three things that are never satisfied, four that never say, ‘Enough!’:

¹⁶Sheol, the barren womb, land never satisfied with water, and fire that never says, ‘Enough!’

⁸Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds those who see and twists the words of the righteous.

¹⁹Do not deny justice or show partiality. Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous.

³Both hands are skilled at evil; the prince and the judge demand a bribe. When the powerful utters his evil desire, they all conspire together.

³²But their vine is from the vine of Sodom and from the fields of Gomorrah. Their grapes are poisonous; their clusters are bitter.

³³Their wine is the venom of serpents, the deadly poison of cobras.

¹This is what the Lord says: “Behold, I will stir up against Babylon and against the people of Leb-kamai the spirit of a destroyer.

¹¹At that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem, “A searing wind from the barren heights in the desert blows toward the daughter of My people, but not to winnow or to sift;

¹²a wind too strong for that comes from Me. Now I also pronounce judgments against them.”

¹⁵Although he flourishes among his brothers, an east wind will come—a wind from the Lord rising up from the desert. His fountain will fail, and his spring will run dry. The wind will plunder his treasury of every precious article.

²⁹Surely you will be ashamed of the sacred oaks in which you have delighted; you will be embarrassed by the gardens that you have chosen.

¹³O Lord, the hope of Israel, all who abandon You will be put to shame. All who turn away will be written in the dust, for they have abandoned the Lord, the fountain of living water.

¹⁷But those who trust in idols and say to molten images, ‘You are our gods!’ will be turned back in utter shame.