Hosea 8

⁷But they, like Adam, have transgressed the covenant; there they were unfaithful to Me.

⁴⁹The Lord will bring a nation from afar, from the ends of the earth, to swoop down upon you like an eagle—a nation whose language you will not understand,

¹³Behold, he advances like the clouds, his chariots like the whirlwind. His horses are swifter than eagles. Woe to us, for we are ruined!

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

⁸Their horses are swifter than leopards, fiercer than wolves of the night. Their horsemen charge ahead, and their cavalry comes from afar. They fly like a vulture, swooping down to devour.

⁸But God found fault with the people and said: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

⁹It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, because they did not abide by My covenant, and I disregarded them, declares the Lord.

²¹Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of My Father in heaven.

¹⁶They profess to know God, but by their actions they deny Him. They are detestable, disobedient, and unfit for any good deed.

¹³Woe to them, for they have strayed from Me! Destruction to them, for they have rebelled against Me! Though I would redeem them, they speak lies against Me.

¹⁴They do not cry out to Me from their hearts when they wail upon their beds. They slash themselves for grain and new wine, but turn away from Me.

³⁴When He slew them, they would seek Him; they repented and searched for God.

³⁵And they remembered that God was their Rock, that God Most High was their Redeemer.

¹¹Later the other virgins arrived and said, ‘Lord, lord, open the door for us!’

⁴If anyone says, “I know Him,” but does not keep His commandments, he is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

⁶⁶You will pursue them in anger and exterminate them from under Your heavens, O Lord.

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

¹¹But My people would not listen to Me, and Israel would not obey Me.

¹¹This is what the Lord says: “For three transgressions of Edom, even four, I will not revoke My judgment, because he pursued his brother with the sword and stifled all compassion; his anger raged continually, and his fury flamed incessantly.

¹⁹Those who chased us were swifter than the eagles in the sky; they pursued us over the mountains and ambushed us in the wilderness.

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

²⁵The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will march out against them in one direction but flee from them in seven. You will be an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.

⁹You are destroyed, O Israel, because you are against Me—against your helper.

¹⁰Where is your king now to save you in all your cities, and the rulers to whom you said, “Give me a king and princes”?

¹⁰Then Shallum son of Jabesh conspired against Zechariah, struck him down and killed him in front of the people, and reigned in his place.

¹¹As for the rest of the acts of Zechariah, they are indeed written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel.

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!”

¹⁶When all Israel saw that the king had refused to listen to them, they answered the king: “What portion do we have in David, and what inheritance in the son of Jesse? To your tents, O Israel! Look now to your own house, O David!” So the Israelites went home,

¹⁷but Rehoboam still reigned over the Israelites living in the cities of Judah.

¹⁴I am the good shepherd. I know My sheep and My sheep know Me,

⁸For she does not acknowledge that it was I who gave her grain, new wine, and oil, who lavished on her silver and gold—which they crafted for Baal.

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.

²⁷Your adulteries and lustful neighings, your shameless prostitution on the hills and in the fields—I have seen your detestable acts. Woe to you, O Jerusalem! How long will you remain unclean?”

²²“How long, O simple ones, will you love your simple ways? How long will scoffers delight in their scorn and fools hate knowledge?

¹⁴Wash the evil from your heart, O Jerusalem, so that you may be saved. How long will you harbor wicked thoughts within you?

¹⁶They abandoned all the commandments of the Lord their God and made for themselves two cast idols of calves and an Asherah pole. They bowed down to all the host of heaven and served Baal.

¹⁷They sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire and practiced divination and soothsaying. They devoted themselves to doing evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking Him to anger.

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.

¹⁸What use is an idol, that a craftsman should carve it—or an image, a teacher of lies? For its maker trusts in his own creation; he makes idols that cannot speak.

³For the customs of the peoples are worthless; they cut down a tree from the forest; it is shaped with a chisel by the hands of a craftsman.

⁴They adorn it with silver and gold and fasten it with hammer and nails, so that it will not totter.

¹⁴Every man is senseless and devoid of knowledge; every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols. For his molten images are a fraud, and there is no breath in them.

¹⁹At Horeb they made a calf and worshiped a molten image.

²⁰They exchanged their Glory for the image of a grass-eating ox.

⁹All makers of idols are nothing, and the things they treasure are worthless. Their witnesses fail to see or comprehend, so they are put to shame.

¹⁰Who fashions a god or casts an idol which profits him nothing?

⁴Their idols are silver and gold, made by the hands of men.

⁵They have mouths, but cannot speak; they have eyes, but cannot see;

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

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.

³The Lord is slow to anger and great in power; the Lord will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. His path is in the whirlwind and storm, and clouds are the dust beneath His feet.

⁹Foreigners consume his strength, but he does not notice. Even his hair is streaked with gray, but he does not know.

³Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites, and other people of the east would come up and invade them,

⁴encamping against them as far as Gaza and destroying the produce of the land. They left Israel with no sustenance, neither sheep nor oxen nor donkeys.

²⁸Is this man Coniah a despised and shattered pot, a jar that no one wants? Why are he and his descendants hurled out and cast into a land they do not know?

³⁴“Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has devoured me; he has crushed me. He has set me aside like an empty vessel; he has swallowed me like a monster; he filled his belly with my delicacies and vomited me out.

²⁰A large house contains not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay. Some indeed are for honorable use, but others are for common use.

²¹So if anyone cleanses himself of what is unfit, he will be a vessel for honor: sanctified, useful to the Master, and prepared for every good work.

³therefore prophesy and declare that this is what the Lord God says: Because they have made you desolate and have trampled you on every side, so that you became a possession of the rest of the nations and were taken up in slander by the lips of their talkers,

¹¹The king of Assyria exiled the Israelites to Assyria and settled them in Halah, in Gozan by the Habor River, and in the cities of the Medes.

⁵The Lord is like an enemy; He has swallowed up Israel. He has swallowed up all her palaces and destroyed her strongholds. He has multiplied mourning and lamentation for the Daughter of Judah.

²⁴a wild donkey at home in the wilderness, sniffing the wind in the heat of her desire. Who can restrain her passion? All who seek her need not weary themselves; in mating season they will find her.

³³Men give gifts to all their prostitutes, but you gave gifts to all your lovers. You bribed them to come to you from everywhere for your illicit favors.

³⁴So your prostitution is the opposite of that of other women: No one solicited your favors, and you paid a fee instead of receiving one; so you are the very opposite!

¹¹So Ephraim has become like a silly, senseless dove—calling out to Egypt, then turning to Assyria.

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.

¹⁹Then Pul king of Assyria invaded the land, and Menahem gave Pul a thousand talents of silver in order to gain his support and strengthen his own grip on the kingdom.

⁶This is the burden against the beasts of the Negev: Through a land of hardship and distress, of lioness and lion, of viper and flying serpent, they carry their wealth on the backs of donkeys and their treasures on the humps of camels, to a people of no profit to them.

³⁷therefore I will surely gather all the lovers with whom you found pleasure, all those you loved and all those you hated. I will gather them against you from all around and expose you before them, and they will see you completely naked.

⁷For this is what the Lord God says: ‘Behold, I will bring against Tyre from the north Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, king of kings, with horses and chariots, with cavalry and a great company of troops.

²Jeremiah the prophet and said, “May our petition come before you; pray to the Lord your God on behalf of this entire remnant. For few of us remain of the many, as you can see with your own eyes.

¹⁰I will chasten them when I please; nations will be gathered against them to put them in bondage for their double transgression.

⁸“Are not all my commanders kings?” he says.

²²Therefore, Oholibah, this is what the Lord God says: ‘I will incite your lovers against you, those from whom you turned away in disgust. And I will bring them against you from every side—

²³the Babylonians and all the Chaldeans, the men of Pekod, Shoa, and Koa, and all the Assyrians with them—all desirable young men, governors and commanders, officers and men of renown, mounted on horses.

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.

²⁸And there you will serve man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell.

¹⁰As my hand seized the idolatrous kingdoms whose images surpassed those of Jerusalem and Samaria,

¹¹and as I have done to Samaria and its idols, will I not also do to Jerusalem and her idols?”

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!”

¹³So I will cast you out of this land into a land that neither you nor your fathers have known. There you will serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor.’

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.

²Their hearts are devious; now they must bear their guilt. The Lord will break down their altars and demolish their sacred pillars.

¹²So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good.

⁶Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding in the sight of the peoples, who will hear of all these statutes and say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.”

⁷For what nation is great enough to have a god as near to them as the Lord our God is to us whenever we call on Him?

⁶My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you as My priests. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your children.

²⁰Have I not written for you thirty sayings about counsel and knowledge,

¹⁵They rejected His statutes and the covenant He had made with their fathers, as well as the decrees He had given them. They pursued worthless idols and became worthless themselves, going after the surrounding nations that the Lord had commanded them not to imitate.

¹⁶They abandoned all the commandments of the Lord their God and made for themselves two cast idols of calves and an Asherah pole. They bowed down to all the host of heaven and served Baal.

²⁶But they were disobedient and rebelled against You; they flung Your law behind their backs. They killed Your prophets, who had admonished them to return to You. They committed terrible blasphemies.

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

⁶For even if they flee destruction, Egypt will gather them and Memphis will bury them. Their precious silver will be taken over by thistles, and thorns will overrun their tents.

⁷The Lord has sworn by the Pride of Jacob: “I will never forget any of their deeds.

²²Even though you offer Me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; for your peace offerings of fattened cattle I will have no regard.

³They will not remain in the land of the Lord; Ephraim will return to Egypt and eat unclean food in Assyria.

⁴They will not pour out wine offerings to the Lord, and their sacrifices will not please Him, but will be to them like the bread of mourners; all who eat will be defiled. For their bread will be for themselves; it will not enter the house of the Lord.

³You shall have no other gods before Me.

²⁷But if you do not listen to Me to keep the Sabbath day holy by not carrying a load while entering the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then I will kindle an unquenchable fire in its gates to consume the citadels of Jerusalem.’”

¹⁸You ignored the Rock who brought you forth; you forgot the God who gave you birth.

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

⁵So I will send fire upon Judah to consume the citadels of Jerusalem.”

¹⁰For you have forgotten the God of your salvation and failed to remember the Rock of your refuge. Therefore, though you cultivate delightful plots and set out cuttings from exotic vines—

¹⁰So I will send fire upon the walls of Tyre to consume its citadels.”