Chronological Plan

¹The word of the LORD that came to Hosea son of Beeri during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and of Jeroboam son of Jehoash, king of Israel.

²When the LORD first spoke to Hosea, he said this to him: Go and marry a woman of promiscuity, and have children of promiscuity, for the land is committing blatant acts of promiscuity by abandoning the LORD.

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

⁴Then the LORD said to him: Name him Jezreel, for in a little while I will bring the bloodshed of Jezreel on the house of Jehu and put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.

⁵On that day I will break the bow of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel.

⁶She conceived again and gave birth to a daughter, and the LORD said to him: Name her Lo-ruhamah, for I will no longer have compassion on the house of Israel. I will certainly take them away.

⁷But I will have compassion on the house of Judah, and I will deliver them by the LORD their God. I will not deliver them by bow, sword, or war, or by horses and cavalry.

⁸After Gomer had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she conceived and gave birth to a son.

⁹Then the LORD said: Name him Lo-ammi, for you are not my people, and I will not be your God.

¹⁰Yet the number of the Israelites will be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or counted. And in the place where they were told: You are not my people, they will be called: Sons of the living God.

¹¹And the Judeans and the Israelites will be gathered together. They will appoint for themselves a single ruler and go up from the land. For the day of Jezreel will be great.

¹Call your brothers: My People and your sisters: Compassion.

²Rebuke your mother; rebuke her. For she is not my wife and I am not her husband. Let her remove the promiscuous look from her face and her adultery from between her breasts.

³Otherwise, I will strip her naked and expose her as she was on the day of her birth. I will make her like a desert and like a parched land, and I will let her die of thirst.

⁴I will have no compassion on her children because they are the children of promiscuity.

⁵Yes, their mother is promiscuous; she conceived them and acted shamefully. For she thought, “I will follow my lovers, the men who give me my food and water, my wool and flax, my oil and drink.”

⁶Therefore, this is what I will do: I will block her way with thorns; I will enclose her with a wall, so that she cannot find her paths.

⁷She will pursue her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them. Then she will think, “I will go back to my former husband, for then it was better for me than now.”

⁸She does not recognize that it is I who gave her the grain, the new wine, and the fresh oil. I lavished silver and gold on her, which they used for Baal.

⁹Therefore, I will take back my grain in its time and my new wine in its season; I will take away my wool and linen, which were to cover her nakedness.

¹⁰Now I will expose her shame in the sight of her lovers, and no one will rescue her from my power.

¹¹I will put an end to all her celebrations: her feasts, New Moons, and Sabbaths — all her festivals.

¹²I will devastate her vines and fig trees. She thinks that these are her wages that her lovers have given her. I will turn them into a thicket, and the wild animals will eat them.

¹³And I will punish her for the days of the Baals, to which she burned incense. She put on her rings and her jewelry and followed her lovers, but she forgot me. This is the LORD’s declaration.

¹⁴Therefore, I am going to persuade her, lead her to the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.

¹⁵There I will give her vineyards back to her and make the Valley of Achor into a gateway of hope. There she will respond as she did in the days of her youth, as in the day she came out of the land of Egypt.

¹⁶In that day — this is the LORD’s declaration — you will call me, “My husband,” and no longer call me, “My Baal.”

¹⁷For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth; they will no longer be remembered by their names.

¹⁸On that day I will make a covenant for them with the wild animals, the birds of the sky, and the creatures that crawl on the ground. I will shatter bow, sword, and weapons of war in the land and will enable the people to rest securely.

¹⁹I will take you to be my wife forever. I will take you to be my wife in righteousness, justice, love, and compassion.

²⁰I will take you to be my wife in faithfulness, and you will know the LORD.

²¹On that day I will respond  — this is the LORD’s declaration. I will respond to the sky, and it will respond to the earth.

²²The earth will respond to the grain, the new wine, and the fresh oil, and they will respond to Jezreel.

²³I will sow her in the land for myself, and I will have compassion on Lo-ruhamah; I will say to Lo-ammi: You are my people, and he will say, “You are my God.”

¹Then the LORD said to me, “Go again; show love to a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, just as the LORD loves the Israelites though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes.”

²So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and five bushels of barley.

³I said to her, “You are to live with me many days. You must not be promiscuous or belong to any man, and I will act the same way toward you.”

⁴For the Israelites must live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, and without ephod or household idols.

⁵Afterward, the people of Israel will return and seek the LORD their God and David their king. They will come with awe to the LORD and to his goodness in the last days.

¹Hear the word of the LORD, people of Israel, for the LORD has a case against the inhabitants of the land: There is no truth, no faithful love, and no knowledge of God in the land!

²Cursing, lying, murder, stealing, and adultery are rampant; one act of bloodshed follows another.

³For this reason the land mourns, and everyone who lives in it languishes, along with the wild animals and the birds of the sky; even the fish of the sea disappear.

⁴But let no one dispute; let no one argue, for my case is against you priests.

⁵You will stumble by day; the prophet will also 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 will reject you from serving as my priest. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your sons.

⁷The more they multiplied, the more they sinned against me. I will change their honor into disgrace.

⁸They feed on the sin of my people; they have an appetite for their iniquity.

⁹The same judgment will happen to both people and priests. I will punish them for their ways and repay them for their deeds.

¹⁰They will eat but not be satisfied; they will be promiscuous but not multiply. For they have abandoned their devotion to the LORD.

¹¹Promiscuity, wine, and new wine take away one’s understanding.

¹²My people consult their wooden idols, and their divining rods inform them. For a spirit of promiscuity leads them astray; they act promiscuously in disobedience to their God.

¹³They sacrifice on the mountaintops, and they burn offerings on the hills, and under oaks, poplars, and terebinths, because their shade is pleasant. And so your daughters act promiscuously and your daughters-in-law commit adultery.

¹⁴I will not punish your daughters when they act promiscuously or your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery, for the men themselves go off with prostitutes and make sacrifices with cult prostitutes. People without discernment are doomed.

¹⁵Israel, if you act promiscuously, don’t let Judah become guilty! Do not go to Gilgal or make a pilgrimage to Beth-aven, and do not swear an oath: As the LORD lives!

¹⁶For Israel is as obstinate as a stubborn cow. Can the LORD now shepherd them like a lamb in an open meadow?

¹⁷Ephraim is attached to idols; leave him alone!

¹⁸When their drinking is over, they turn to promiscuity. Israel’s leaders fervently love disgrace.

¹⁹A wind with its wings will carry them off, and they will be ashamed of their sacrifices.

¹Hear this, priests! Pay attention, house of Israel! Listen, royal house! For the judgment applies to you because you have been a snare at Mizpah and a net spread out on Tabor.

²Rebels are deeply involved in slaughter; I will be a punishment for all of them.

³I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hidden from me. For now, Ephraim, you have acted promiscuously; Israel is defiled.

⁴Their actions do not allow them to return to their God, for a spirit of promiscuity is among them, and they do not know the LORD.

⁵Israel’s arrogance testifies against them. Both Israel and Ephraim stumble because of their iniquity; even Judah will stumble with them.

⁶They go with their flocks and herds to seek the LORD but do not find him; he has withdrawn from them.

⁷They betrayed the LORD; indeed, they gave birth to illegitimate children. Now the New Moon will devour them along with their fields.

⁸Blow the horn in Gibeah, the trumpet in Ramah; raise the war cry in Beth-aven: Look behind you, Benjamin!

⁹Ephraim will become a desolation on the day of punishment; I announce what is certain among the tribes of Israel.

¹⁰The princes of Judah are like those who move boundary markers; I will pour out my fury on them like water.

¹¹Ephraim is oppressed, crushed in judgment, for he is determined to follow what is worthless.

¹²So I am like rot to Ephraim and like decay to the house of Judah.

¹³When Ephraim saw his sickness and Judah his wound, Ephraim went to Assyria and sent a delegation to the great king. But he cannot cure you or heal your wound.

¹⁴For I am like a lion to Ephraim and like a young lion to the house of Judah. Yes, I will tear them to pieces and depart. I will carry them off, and no one can rescue them.

¹⁵I will depart and return to my place until they recognize their guilt and seek my face; they will search for me in their distress.

¹Come, let us return to the LORD. For he has torn us, and he will heal us; he has wounded us, and he will bind up our wounds.

²He will revive us after two days, and on the third day he will raise us up so we can live in his presence.

³Let us strive to know the LORD. His appearance is as sure as the dawn. He will come to us like the rain, like the spring showers that water the land.

⁴What am I going to do with you, Ephraim? What am I going to do with you, Judah? Your love is like the morning mist and like the early dew that vanishes.

⁵This is why I have used the prophets to cut them down; I have killed them with the words from my mouth. My judgment strikes like lightning.

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

⁷But they, like Adam, have violated the covenant; there they have betrayed me.

⁸Gilead is a city of evildoers, tracked with bloody footprints.

⁹Like raiders who wait in ambush for someone, a band of priests murders on the road to Shechem. They commit atrocities.

¹⁰I have seen something horrible in the house of Israel: Ephraim’s promiscuity is there; Israel is defiled.

¹¹A harvest is also appointed for you, Judah. When I return my people from captivity,

¹when I heal Israel, the iniquity of Ephraim and the crimes of Samaria will be exposed. For they practice fraud; a thief breaks in; a raiding party pillages outside.

²But they never consider that I remember all their evil. Now their actions are all around them; they are right in front of my face.

³They please the king with their evil, the princes with their lies.

⁴All of them commit adultery; they are like an oven heated by a baker who stops stirring the fire from the kneading of the dough until it is leavened.

⁵On the day of our king, the princes are sick with the heat of wine  — there is a conspiracy with traitors.

⁶For they — their hearts like an oven — draw him into their oven. Their anger smolders all night; in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.

⁷All of them are as hot as an oven, and they consume their rulers. All their kings fall; not one of them calls on me.

⁸Ephraim has allowed himself to get mixed up with the nations. Ephraim is unturned bread baked on a griddle.

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

¹⁰Israel’s arrogance testifies against them, yet they do not return to the LORD their God, and for all this, they do not seek him.

¹¹So Ephraim has become like a silly, senseless dove; they call to Egypt, and they go to Assyria.

¹²As they are going, I will spread my net over them; I will bring them down like birds of the sky. I will discipline them in accordance with the news that reaches their assembly.

¹³Woe to them, for they fled from me; destruction to them, for they rebelled against me! Though I want to redeem them, they speak lies against me.

¹⁴They do not cry to me from their hearts; rather, they wail on their beds. They slash themselves for grain and new wine; they turn away from me.

¹⁵I trained and strengthened their arms, but they plot evil against me.

¹⁶They turn, but not to what is above; they are like a faulty bow. Their leaders will fall by the sword because of their insolent tongue. They will be ridiculed for this in the land of Egypt.