Bible in 90 Days Plan

¹And the LORD said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.”

²So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley.

³And I said to her, “You must dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the whore, or belong to another man; so will I also be to you.”

⁴For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or household gods.

⁵Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the LORD their God, and David their king, and they shall come in fear to the LORD and to his goodness in the latter days.

¹Hear the word of the LORD, O children of Israel, for the LORD has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or steadfast love, and no knowledge of God in the land;

²there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.

³Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens, and even the fish of the sea are taken away.

⁴Yet let no one contend, and let none accuse, for with you is my contention, O priest.

⁵You shall stumble by day; the prophet also shall stumble with you by night; and I will destroy your mother.

⁶My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.

⁷The more they increased, the more they sinned against me; I will change their glory into shame.

⁸They feed on the sin of my people; they are greedy for their iniquity.

⁹And it shall be like people, like priest; I will punish them for their ways and repay them for their deeds.

¹⁰They shall eat, but not be satisfied; they shall play the whore, but not multiply, because they have forsaken the LORD to cherish

¹¹whoredom, wine, and new wine, which take away the understanding.

¹²My people inquire of a piece of wood, and their walking staff gives them oracles. For a spirit of whoredom has led them astray, and they have left their God to play the whore.

¹³They sacrifice on the tops of the mountains and burn offerings on the hills, under oak, poplar, and terebinth, because their shade is good. Therefore your daughters play the whore, and your brides commit adultery.

¹⁴I will not punish your daughters when they play the whore, nor your brides when they commit adultery; for the men themselves go aside with prostitutes and sacrifice with cult prostitutes, and a people without understanding shall come to ruin.

¹⁵Though you play the whore, O Israel, let not Judah become guilty. Enter not into Gilgal, nor go up to Beth-aven, and swear not, “As the LORD lives.”

¹⁶Like a stubborn heifer, Israel is stubborn; can the LORD now feed them like a lamb in a broad pasture?

¹⁷Ephraim is joined to idols; leave him alone.

¹⁸When their drink is gone, they give themselves to whoring; their rulers dearly love shame.

¹⁹A wind has wrapped them in its wings, and they shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices.

¹Hear this, O priests! Pay attention, O house of Israel! Give ear, O house of the king! For the judgment is for you; for you have been a snare at Mizpah and a net spread upon Tabor.

²And the revolters have gone deep into slaughter, but I will discipline all of them.

³I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hidden from me; for now, O Ephraim, you have played the whore; Israel is defiled.

⁴Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God. For the spirit of whoredom is within them, and they know not the LORD.

⁵The pride of Israel testifies to his face; Israel and Ephraim shall stumble in his guilt; Judah also shall stumble with them.

⁶With their flocks and herds they shall go to seek the LORD, but they will not find him; he has withdrawn from them.

⁷They have dealt faithlessly with the LORD; for they have borne alien children. Now the new moon shall devour them with their fields.

⁸Blow the horn in Gibeah, the trumpet in Ramah. Sound the alarm at Beth-aven; we follow you, O Benjamin!

⁹Ephraim shall become a desolation in the day of punishment; among the tribes of Israel I make known what is sure.

¹⁰The princes of Judah have become like those who move the landmark; upon them I will pour out my wrath like water.

¹¹Ephraim is oppressed, crushed in judgment, because he was determined to go after filth.

¹²But I am like a moth to Ephraim, and like dry rot to the house of Judah.

¹³When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah his wound, then Ephraim went to Assyria, and sent to the great king. But he is not able to cure you or heal your wound.

¹⁴For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear and go away; I will carry off, and no one shall rescue.

¹⁵I will return again to my place, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in their distress earnestly seek me.

¹“Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.

²After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him.

³Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.”

⁴What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away.

⁵Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light.

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

⁷But like Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me.

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

⁹As robbers lie in wait for a man, so the priests band together; they murder on the way to Shechem; they commit villainy.

¹⁰In the house of Israel I have seen a horrible thing; Ephraim's whoredom is there; Israel is defiled.

¹¹For you also, O Judah, a harvest is appointed. When I restore the fortunes of my people,

¹when I would heal Israel, the iniquity of Ephraim is revealed, and the evil deeds of Samaria, for they deal falsely; the thief breaks in, and the bandits raid outside.

²But they do not consider that I remember all their evil. Now their deeds surround them; they are before my face.

³By their evil they make the king glad, and the princes by their treachery.

⁴They are all adulterers; they are like a heated oven whose baker ceases to stir the fire, from the kneading of the dough until it is leavened.

⁵On the day of our king, the princes became sick with the heat of wine; he stretched out his hand with mockers.

⁶For with hearts like an oven they approach their intrigue; all night their anger smolders; in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.

⁷All of them are hot as an oven, and they devour their rulers. All their kings have fallen, and none of them calls upon me.

⁸Ephraim mixes himself with the peoples; Ephraim is a cake not turned.

⁹Strangers devour his strength, and he knows it not; gray hairs are sprinkled upon him, and he knows it not.

¹⁰The pride of Israel testifies to his face; yet they do not return to the LORD their God, nor seek him, for all this.

¹¹Ephraim is like a dove, silly and without sense, calling to Egypt, going to Assyria.

¹²As they go, I will spread over them my net; I will bring them down like birds of the heavens; I will discipline them according to the report made to their congregation.

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

¹⁴They do not cry to me from the heart, but they wail upon their beds; for grain and wine they gash themselves; they rebel against me.

¹⁵Although I trained and strengthened their arms, yet they devise evil against me.

¹⁶They return, but not upward; they are like a treacherous bow; their princes shall fall by the sword because of the insolence of their tongue. This shall be their derision in the land of Egypt.

¹Set the trumpet to your lips! One like a vulture is over the house of the LORD, because they have transgressed my covenant and rebelled against my law.

²To me they cry, “My God, we — Israel — know you.”

³Israel has spurned the good; the enemy shall pursue him.

⁴They made kings, but not through me. They set up princes, but I knew it not. With their silver and gold they made idols for their own destruction.

⁵I have spurned your calf, O Samaria. My anger burns against them. How long will they be incapable of innocence?

⁶For it is from Israel; a craftsman made it; it is not God. The calf of Samaria shall be broken to pieces.

⁷For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads; it shall yield no flour; if it were to yield, strangers would devour it.

⁸Israel is swallowed up; already they are among the nations as a useless vessel.

⁹For they have gone up to Assyria, a wild donkey wandering alone; Ephraim has hired lovers.

¹⁰Though they hire allies among the nations, I will soon gather them up. And the king and princes shall soon writhe because of the tribute.

¹¹Because Ephraim has multiplied altars for sinning, they have become to him altars for sinning.

¹²Were I to write for him my laws by the ten thousands, they would be regarded as a strange thing.

¹³As for my sacrificial offerings, they sacrifice meat and eat it, but the LORD does not accept them. Now he will remember their iniquity and punish their sins; they shall return to Egypt.

¹⁴For Israel has forgotten his Maker and built palaces, and Judah has multiplied fortified cities; so I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour her strongholds.

¹Rejoice not, O Israel! Exult not like the peoples; for you have played the whore, forsaking your God. You have loved a prostitute's wages on all threshing floors.

²Threshing floor and wine vat shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail them.

³They shall not remain in the land of the LORD, but Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and they shall eat unclean food in Assyria.

⁴They shall not pour drink offerings of wine to the LORD, and their sacrifices shall not please him. It shall be like mourners' bread to them; all who eat of it shall be defiled; for their bread shall be for their hunger only; it shall not come to the house of the LORD.

⁵What will you do on the day of the appointed festival, and on the day of the feast of the LORD?

⁶For behold, they are going away from destruction; but Egypt shall gather them; Memphis shall bury them. Nettles shall possess their precious things of silver; thorns shall be in their tents.

⁷The days of punishment have come; the days of recompense have come; Israel shall know it. The prophet is a fool; the man of the spirit is mad, because of your great iniquity and great hatred.

⁸The prophet is the watchman of Ephraim with my God; yet a fowler's snare is on all his ways, and hatred in the house of his God.

⁹They have deeply corrupted themselves as in the days of Gibeah: he will remember their iniquity; he will punish their sins.

¹⁰Like grapes in the wilderness, I found Israel. Like the first fruit on the fig tree in its first season, I saw your fathers. But they came to Baal-peor and consecrated themselves to the thing of shame, and became detestable like the thing they loved.

¹¹Ephraim's glory shall fly away like a bird — no birth, no pregnancy, no conception!

¹²Even if they bring up children, I will bereave them till none is left. Woe to them when I depart from them!

¹³Ephraim, as I have seen, was like a young palm planted in a meadow; but Ephraim must lead his children out to slaughter.

¹⁴Give them, O LORD — what will you give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts.

¹⁵Every evil of theirs is in Gilgal; there I began to hate them. Because of the wickedness of their deeds I will drive them out of my house. I will love them no more; all their princes are rebels.

¹⁶Ephraim is stricken; their root is dried up; they shall bear no fruit. Even though they give birth, I will put their beloved children to death.

¹⁷My God will reject them because they have not listened to him; they shall be wanderers among the nations.

¹Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit. The more his fruit increased, the more altars he built; as his country improved, he improved his pillars.

²Their heart is false; now they must bear their guilt. The LORD will break down their altars and destroy their pillars.

³For now they will say: “We have no king, for we do not fear the LORD; and a king — what could he do for us?”

⁴They utter mere words; with empty oaths they make covenants; so judgment springs up like poisonous weeds in the furrows of the field.

⁵The inhabitants of Samaria tremble for the calf of Beth-aven. Its people mourn for it, and so do its idolatrous priests — those who rejoiced over it and over its glory — for it has departed from them.

⁶The thing itself shall be carried to Assyria as tribute to the great king. Ephraim shall be put to shame, and Israel shall be ashamed of his idol.

⁷Samaria's king shall perish like a twig on the face of the waters.

⁸The high places of Aven, the sin of Israel, shall be destroyed. Thorn and thistle shall grow up on their altars, and they shall say to the mountains, “Cover us,” and to the hills, “Fall on us.”

⁹From the days of Gibeah, you have sinned, O Israel; there they have continued. Shall not the war against the unjust overtake them in Gibeah?

¹⁰When I please, I will discipline them, and nations shall be gathered against them when they are bound up for their double iniquity.

¹¹Ephraim was a trained calf that loved to thresh, and I spared her fair neck; but I will put Ephraim to the yoke; Judah must plow; Jacob must harrow for himself.

¹²Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the LORD, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.

¹³You have plowed iniquity; you have reaped injustice; you have eaten the fruit of lies. Because you have trusted in your own way and in the multitude of your warriors,

¹⁴therefore the tumult of war shall arise among your people, and all your fortresses shall be destroyed, as Shalman destroyed Beth-arbel on the day of battle; mothers were dashed in pieces with their children.

¹⁵Thus it shall be done to you, O Bethel, because of your great evil. At dawn the king of Israel shall be utterly cut off.

¹When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.

²The more they were called, the more they went away; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols.

³Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that I healed them.

⁴I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them.

⁵They shall not return to the land of Egypt, but Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me.

⁶The sword shall rage against their cities, consume the bars of their gates, and devour them because of their own counsels.

⁷My people are bent on turning away from me, and though they call out to the Most High, he shall not raise them up at all.

⁸How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.

⁹I will not execute my burning anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.

¹⁰They shall go after the LORD; he will roar like a lion; when he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west;

¹¹they shall come trembling like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria, and I will return them to their homes, declares the LORD.

¹²Ephraim has surrounded me with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit, but Judah still walks with God and is faithful to the Holy One.

¹Ephraim feeds on the wind and pursues the east wind all day long; they multiply falsehood and violence; they make a covenant with Assyria, and oil is carried to Egypt.

²The LORD has an indictment against Judah and will punish Jacob according to his ways; he will repay him according to his deeds.

³In the womb he took his brother by the heel, and in his manhood he strove with God.

⁴He strove with the angel and prevailed; he wept and sought his favor. He met God at Bethel, and there God spoke with us —

⁵the LORD, the God of hosts, the LORD is his memorial name:

⁶“So you, by the help of your God, return, hold fast to love and justice, and wait continually for your God.”

⁷A merchant, in whose hands are false balances, he loves to oppress.

⁸Ephraim has said, “Ah, but I am rich; I have found wealth for myself; in all my labors they cannot find in me iniquity or sin.”

⁹I am the LORD your God from the land of Egypt; I will again make you dwell in tents, as in the days of the appointed feast.

¹⁰I spoke to the prophets; it was I who multiplied visions, and through the prophets gave parables.

¹¹If there is iniquity in Gilead, they shall surely come to nothing: in Gilgal they sacrifice bulls; their altars also are like stone heaps on the furrows of the field.

¹²Jacob fled to the land of Aram; there Israel served for a wife, and for a wife he guarded sheep.

¹³By a prophet the LORD brought Israel up from Egypt, and by a prophet he was guarded.

¹⁴Ephraim has given bitter provocation; so his Lord will leave his bloodguilt on him and will repay him for his disgraceful deeds.

¹When Ephraim spoke, there was trembling; he was exalted in Israel, but he incurred guilt through Baal and died.

²And now they sin more and more, and make for themselves metal images, idols skillfully made of their silver, all of them the work of craftsmen. It is said of them, “Those who offer human sacrifice kiss calves!”

³Therefore they shall be like the morning mist or like the dew that goes early away, like the chaff that swirls from the threshing floor or like smoke from a window.

⁴But I am the LORD your God from the land of Egypt; you know no God but me, and besides me there is no savior.

⁵It was I who knew you in the wilderness, in the land of drought;

⁶but when they had grazed, they became full, they were filled, and their heart was lifted up; therefore they forgot me.

⁷So I am to them like a lion; like a leopard I will lurk beside the way.

⁸I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs; I will tear open their breast, and there I will devour them like a lion, as a wild beast would rip them open.

⁹He destroys you, O Israel, for you are against me, against your helper.

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

¹¹I gave you a king in my anger, and I took him away in my wrath.

¹²The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up; his sin is kept in store.

¹³The pangs of childbirth come for him, but he is an unwise son, for at the right time he does not present himself at the opening of the womb.

¹⁴I shall ransom them from the power of Sheol; I shall redeem them from Death. O Death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your sting? Compassion is hidden from my eyes.

¹⁵Though he may flourish among his brothers, the east wind, the wind of the LORD, shall come, rising from the wilderness, and his fountain shall dry up; his spring shall be parched; it shall strip his treasury of every precious thing.

¹⁶Samaria shall bear her guilt, because she has rebelled against her God; they shall fall by the sword; their little ones shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open.

¹Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity.

²Take with you words and return to the LORD; say to him, “Take away all iniquity; accept what is good, and we will pay with bulls the vows of our lips.

³Assyria shall not save us; we will not ride on horses; and we will say no more, ‘Our God,’ to the work of our hands. In you the orphan finds mercy.”

⁴I will heal their apostasy; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them.

⁵I will be like the dew to Israel; he shall blossom like the lily; he shall take root like the trees of Lebanon;

⁶his shoots shall spread out; his beauty shall be like the olive, and his fragrance like Lebanon.

⁷They shall return and dwell beneath my shadow; they shall flourish like the grain; they shall blossom like the vine; their fame shall be like the wine of Lebanon.

⁸O Ephraim, what have I to do with idols? It is I who answer and look after you. I am like an evergreen cypress; from me comes your fruit.

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 upright walk in them, but transgressors stumble in them.

¹The word of the LORD that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel:

²Hear this, you elders; give ear, all inhabitants of the land! Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers?

³Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation.

⁴What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten, and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten.

⁵Awake, you drunkards, and weep, and wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine, for it is cut off from your mouth.

⁶For a nation has come up against my land, powerful and beyond number; its teeth are lions' teeth, and it has the fangs of a lioness.

⁷It has laid waste my vine and splintered my fig tree; it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down; their branches are made white.

⁸Lament like a virgin wearing sackcloth for the bridegroom of her youth.

⁹The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the LORD. The priests mourn, the ministers of the LORD.

¹⁰The fields are destroyed, the ground mourns, because the grain is destroyed, the wine dries up, the oil languishes.

¹¹Be ashamed, O tillers of the soil; wail, O vinedressers, for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field has perished.

¹²The vine dries up; the fig tree languishes. Pomegranate, palm, and apple, all the trees of the field are dried up, and gladness dries up from the children of man.

¹³Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests; wail, O ministers of the altar. Go in, pass the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God! Because grain offering and drink offering are withheld from the house of your God.

¹⁴Consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the LORD your God, and cry out to the LORD.

¹⁵Alas for the day! For the day of the LORD is near, and as destruction from the Almighty it comes.

¹⁶Is not the food cut off before our eyes, joy and gladness from the house of our God?

¹⁷The seed shrivels under the clods; the storehouses are desolate; the granaries are torn down because the grain has dried up.

¹⁸How the beasts groan! The herds of cattle are perplexed because there is no pasture for them; even the flocks of sheep suffer.

¹⁹To you, O LORD, I call. For fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and flame has burned all the trees of the field.

²⁰Even the beasts of the field pant for you because the water brooks are dried up, and fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness.