1 The word of the Jehovah came to Hoshea the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.
2 The beginning of the word of the Lord through Hosea. The LORD said to Hosea: Go, take for yourself a wife of fornication, and children of fornication; because the earth commits whoredom by turning away from Jehovah.
3 So she went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.
4 And the LORD said to him, Call it Jezreel; For from now on I will punish the house of Jehu because of the blood of Jezreel, and I will cause the kingdom of the house of Israel to end.
5 And on that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.
6 She conceived again and gave birth to a daughter. And God said to him, Call him Lo-ruhama, for I will no longer have mercy on the house of Israel, but I will put them away altogether.
7 But I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the Lord their God; and I will not save them with bow, nor with sword, nor with battle, nor with horses nor riders.
8 After he had weaned Lo-ruhama, he conceived and gave birth to a son.
9 And God said, Call him Lo-ammi, for you are not my people, nor will I be your God.
10 Yet the number of the children of Israel will be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or counted. And in the place where it was said to them: You are not my people, it will be said to them: You are children of the living God.
11 And the children of Judah and Israel will gather together, and they will appoint one leader, and they will come up from the land; for the day of Jezreel will be great.
1 Tell your brothers: Ammi; and your sisters: Ruhama.
2 Contend with your mother, contend; because she is not my wife, nor am I her husband; apart from her, therefore, her fornications from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts;
3 lest I strip her and make her naked, make her like the day she was born, make her like a desert, leave her like a dry land, and kill her with thirst.
4 Nor will I have mercy on her children, because they are children of prostitution.
5 Because her mother became a prostitute; She who gave birth to them was dishonored, because she said: I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.
6 Therefore, behold, I will surround her way with thorns, and I will surround her with a hedge, and she will not find her way.
7 She will follow her lovers, and she will not overtake them; she will seek them, and she will not find them. Then she will say: I will go and return to my first husband; because it was better for me then than now.
8 And she did not recognize that I gave her the wheat, the wine, and the oil, and that I multiplied the silver and gold that they offered to Baal.
9 Therefore I will return and take my wheat in her season, and my wine in her season, and I will take away my wool and my linen, which I had given to cover her nakedness.
10 And now I will reveal her folly before the eyes of her lovers, and no one will rescue her from my hand.
11 I will cause all her joy to cease, her festivals, her new moons and her Sabbaths, and all her festivals.
12 And I will cut down her vines and her fig trees, of which she said, “They are my wages, wages that my lovers have given me.” And I will reduce them to a bush, and the beasts of the field will eat them.
13 And I will punish her for the days when she burned incense to the Baalim, and she adorned herself with her earrings and her jewels, and she went after her lovers and forgot me, says the Lord.
14 But behold, I will draw her and lead her into the wilderness, and I will speak of her to her heart.
15 And I will give him her vineyards from there, and the valley of Achor as a gate of hope; and there she will sing as she did in the days of her youth, and as in the day of her coming up from the land of Egypt.
16 At that time, says the Lord, you will call me Ishi, and you will no longer call me Baali.
17 For I will put the names of the Baalim out of their mouths, and their names will no longer be mentioned.
18 At that time I will make a covenant for you with the beasts of the field, with the birds of the air and with the serpents of the earth; and I will remove bow and sword and war from the land, and I will make you sleep in safety.
19 And I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you to me in justice, justice, kindness and mercy.
20 And I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you will know the Lord.
21 At that time I will answer, says the Lord, I will answer to the heavens, and they will answer to the earth.
22 And the land will respond to wheat, wine and oil, and they will respond to Jezreel.
23 And I will sow it for myself in the land, and will have mercy on Lo-ruhama; and I will say to Lo-ammi: You are my people, and he will say: My God.
1 The Lord said to me again: Go, love a woman who is loved by her companion, although she is an adulteress, like the love of the Lord toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods and love raisin cakes.
2 So I bought it for myself for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a half of barley.
3 And I said unto him, Thou shalt be mine for many days; You shall not fornicate, nor take another man; I will do the same with you.
4 For many days will the children of Israel be without a king, without a prince, without a sacrifice, without an image, without an ephod, and without a teraphim.
5 Afterwards the children of Israel will return and seek Jehovah their God, and David their king; and they will fear the LORD and his goodness at the end of the days.
1 Hear the word of the LORD, children of Israel, for the LORD contends with the inhabitants of the land; because there is no truth, no mercy, no knowledge of God on earth.
2 Perjury, lying, killing, theft and adultery prevail, and murder after murder follows one another.
3 Therefore the earth will mourn, and every inhabitant of it will be exhausted, with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air; and even the fish of the sea will die.
4 Surely do not dispute or rebuke man, for your people are like those who resist the priest.
5 Therefore you will fall in the day, and the prophet will also fall with you by night; I will destroy your mother.
6 My people were destroyed because they lacked knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will cast you out of the priesthood; and because you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your children.
7 According to their greatness, so they sinned against me; I too will turn his honor into a disgrace.
8 They eat of the sin of my people, and in their wickedness they lift up their soul.
9 And the people will be like the priest; I will punish him for his conduct, and I will repay him according to his works.
10 They will eat, but they will not be satisfied; They will commit fornication, but they will not multiply, because they have stopped serving the Lord.
11 Fornication, wine and new wine take away judgment.
12 My people ask their wooden idol, and the log answers them; because the spirit of fornication caused him to err, and they forsook their God to commit fornication.
13 On the tops of the mountains they sacrificed, and incensed on the hills, under the oaks, poplars and elms that had good shade; therefore your daughters will commit fornication, and your daughters-in-law will commit adultery.
14 I will not punish your daughters when they commit fornication, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery; because they themselves go with harlots, and sacrifice with bad women; Therefore, the people without understanding will fall.
15 If you commit fornication, Israel, at least Judah will not sin; and do not enter Gilgal, nor go up to Beth-aven, nor swear, As the Lord lives.
16 For Israel turned away like a wild heifer; Will the Lord now feed them like lambs in a spacious place?
17 Ephraim is given to idols; leave it alone.
18 His drink became corrupt; they fornicated without ceasing; His princes loved what shames.
19 The wind has bound them in their wings, and they will be ashamed of their sacrifices.
1 Priests, hear this, and be attentive, house of Israel, and house of the king, listen; for judgment is upon you, for you have been a snare in Mizpah, and a net spread on Tabor.
2 And making victims they have gone down to the depths; therefore I will punish them all.
3 I know Ephraim, and Israel is not unknown to me; for now, O Ephraim, you have played the harlot, and Israel has defiled itself.
4 They do not think of turning to their God, because the spirit of fornication is among them, and they do not know the Lord.
5 The pride of Israel will belie him to his face; Israel and Ephraim will stumble in their sin, and Judah will also stumble over them.
6 They will go with their sheep and with their herds seeking the Lord, and will not find him; he turned away from them.
7 They have transgressed against the Lord, because they have begotten strange children; Now in a single month they and their inheritance will be consumed.
8 Blow the trumpet in Gibeah, trumpet in Ramah: sound an alarm in Beth-aven; tremble, oh Benjamin.
9 Ephraim will be devastated on the day of punishment; I made the truth known to the tribes of Israel.
10 The princes of Judah were like those who trespass the boundaries; I will pour out my anger on them like water.
11 Ephraim is vexed, broken in judgment, because he wanted to walk after vanities.
12 Therefore I will be like a moth to Ephraim, and like a worm to the house of Judah.
13 And Ephraim will see his illness, and Judah will see his wound; Then Ephraim will go to Assyria and send to King Jareb; but he will not be able to heal you, nor will he heal your wounds.
14 For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah; I, I will snatch, and go away; I will take, and there will be no one to deliver
15 I will walk and return to my place, until they acknowledge their sin and seek my face. In their anguish they will look for me.
1 Come and let us return to the Lord; for he snatched away, and he will heal us; he wounded, and he will bind us up.
2 He will revive us after two days; On the third day he will raise us up, and we will live before him.
3 And we will know, and continue to know, the Lord; His departure is prepared like the dawn, and he will come to us like the rain, like the latter and early rain to the earth.
4 What will I do to you, Ephraim? What shall I do to you, O Judah? Your piety is like a morning cloud, and like the dew of the morning, which vanishes.
5 For this cause I cut them off through the prophets, with the words of my mouth I killed them; and your judgments will be like light that goes forth.
6 For I desire mercy, and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
7 But they, like Adam, transgressed the covenant; there they transgressed against me.
8 Gilead, a city of workers of iniquity, stained with blood.
9 And like thieves waiting for a man, so a company of priests kills on the road to Shechem; thus they committed an abomination.
10 In the house of Israel I have seen filth; There Ephraim committed fornication, and Israel was defiled.
11 For you also, O Judah, a harvest is prepared, when I bring back the captivity of my people.
1 While I was healing Israel, the iniquity of Ephraim was revealed, and the iniquities of Samaria; because they did deceit; and the thief enters, and the robber plunders outside.
2 And they do not consider it in his heart that I remember all his wickedness; Now his works will surround them; They are in front of me.
3 They delight the king with his wickedness, and the princes with his lies.
4 All of them are adulterers; They are like an oven lit by the baker, who stops stoking the fire after the dough is made, until it has risen.
5 On the day of our king the princes made him sick with cups of wine; he stretched out his hand with the scorners.
6 They applied his heart, like a furnace, to his devices; His baker sleeps all night; In the morning it is lit like a flame of fire.
7 All of them burn like an oven, and they devoured their judges; all their kings fell; There is no one among them who cries out to me.
8 Ephraim has mixed with the other towns; Efraín was an unturned cake.
9 Strangers devoured his strength, and he did not know it; and even gray hairs have covered him, and he did not know it.
10 And the pride of Israel will testify against him to his face; and they did not return to Jehovah their God, nor sought him for all this.
11 Ephraim was like a foolish dove, without understanding; They will call Egypt, they will go to Assyria.
12 When they go, I will spread my net over them; I will make them fall like birds of the air; I will punish them according to what has been announced in their congregations.
13 Woe to them! because they turned away from me; destruction will come upon them, because they rebelled against me; I redeemed them, and they spoke lies against me.
14 And they did not cry out to me with their hearts when they cried out on their beds; They gathered together for wheat and new wine, they rebelled against me.
15 And although I taught them and strengthened their arms, they thought evil against me.
16 They returned, but not to the Most High; They were like a deceitful bow; Their princes fell by the sword for the pride of their tongue; This will be their ridicule in the land of Egypt.
1 Put a trumpet in your mouth. He comes like an eagle against the house of the Lord, because they have transgressed my covenant and rebelled against my law.
2 To me Israel will cry: My God, we have known you.
3 Israel rejected good; enemy will pursue him.
4 They established kings, but not chosen by me; They constituted princes, but I did not know it; From their silver and their gold they made idols for themselves, to be destroyed themselves.
5 Your calf, O Samaria, caused you to go away; My anger was kindled against them, until they could not achieve purification.
6 For this is also of Israel, and he made it a craftsman; he is not God; therefore the calf of Samaria will be broken into pieces.
7 For they sowed the wind, and they will reap the whirlwind; They will have no harvest, nor will their ear make flour; and if he does it, strangers will eat it.
8 Israel will be devoured; He will soon be among the nations as a vessel not valued.
9 For they went up to Assyria, like a wild donkey for themselves; Ephraim rented lovers with a salary.
10 Although they rent among the nations, now I will gather them together, and they will be afflicted for a little while because of the burden of the king and the princes.
11 Because Ephraim multiplied altars to sin, he had altars to sin.
12 I wrote to him the greatness of my law, and they were considered a strange thing.
13 In the sacrifices of my offerings they sacrificed meat, and ate; Jehovah did not want them; now he will remember his iniquity, and punish his sin; they will return to Egypt.
14 So Israel forgot his Maker, and built temples, and Judah multiplied fortified cities; but I will bring fire into their cities, which will consume their palaces.
1 Do not rejoice, O Israel, until you leap for joy like the people, for you have committed fornication by turning away from your God; You have earned a whore’s wages in all the wheat fields.
2 The threshing floor and the winepress will not support them, and the new wine will fail them.
3 They will not remain in the land of the Lord, but Ephraim will return to Egypt and Assyria, where they will eat unclean food.
4 They shall not make libations to the Lord, nor will his sacrifices be acceptable to him; as bread for those in mourning they will be to them; all who eat of it will be unclean. Therefore it will be their bread for themselves; that bread will not enter the house of the Lord.
5 What will you do on the day of the solemnity, and on the day of the feast of the Lord?
6 For behold, they are gone because of the destruction. Egypt will collect them, Memphis will bury them. The nettle will conquer the desirability of its silver, and the hawthorn will grow in its dwellings.
7 The days of punishment have come, the days of retribution have come; and Israel will know it. The prophet is foolish, the man is foolish in spirit, because of the multitude of your wickedness and great hatred.
8 Ephraim is a watchtower toward my God; The prophet is a hunter’s snare in all his ways, hatred in the house of his God.
9 They reached the lowest level of corruption, as in the days of Gibeah; now he will remember his iniquity, he will punish his sin.
10 I found Israel like grapes in the desert; Like the early fruit of the fig tree in its beginning I saw your fathers. They turned to Baal-peor, turned away to shame, and became abominable like that which they loved.
11 The glory of Ephraim will fly like a bird, so that there will be no births, nor pregnancies, nor conceptions.
12 And if their children become great, I will remove them from among men, for woe to them too, when I depart from them!
13 Ephraim, as I see, is like Tyre, situated in a delightful place; but Ephraim will bring out his children to the slaughter.
14 Give them, O Jehovah, what you will give them; Give them a womb that aborts, and dry breasts.
15 All their wickedness was in Gilgal; There, then, I took a dislike to them; For the perversity of their works I will drive them out of my house; I will not love them anymore; all their princes are disloyal.
16 Ephraim was wounded, his root is dry, he will bear no more fruit; Even if they beget, I will kill what is desirable in their womb.
17 My God will reject them, because they did not listen to him; and they will wander among the nations.
1 Israel is a leafy vineyard, bearing abundant fruit for itself; According to the abundance of his fruit he also multiplied the altars, according to the goodness of his land his idols increased.
2 His heart is divided. Now they will be found guilty; The Lord will demolish his altars, he will destroy his idols.
3 Surely they will now say, We have no king, because we did not fear the Lord; and what would the king do for us?
4 They have spoken words swearing in vain when making a covenant; Therefore, judgment will flourish like wormwood in the furrows of the field.
5 The inhabitants of Samaria will be terrified by the calves of Bethaven; for his people will mourn because of the calf, and his priests who rejoiced in it because of the glory of it, which will be dissipated.
6 He will even be taken to Assyria as a gift to King Jareb; Ephraim will be ashamed, and Israel will be ashamed of his counsel.
7 His king was cut off from Samaria like foam on the surface of the waters.
8 And the high places of Aven will be destroyed, the sin of Israel; Thorn and thistle will grow on their altars. And they will say to the mountains: Cover us; and to the hills: Fall on us.
9 Since the days of Gibeah you have sinned, O Israel; there they were; The battle in Gibeah against the wicked did not take them.
10 And I will punish them whenever I wish; and peoples will gather upon them when they are bound for their double crime.
11 Ephraim is a tamed heifer, who loves to thresh, but I will pass over her fresh neck; I will make Ephraim bear a yoke; Judah will plow, Jacob will break his clods.
12 Sow for yourselves in righteousness, reap for yourselves in mercy; make fallow for yourselves; for it is time to seek the Lord, until he comes and teaches you righteousness.
13 You have plowed wickedness, and reaped iniquity; You will eat fruit of lies, because you trusted in your way and in the multitude of your mighty men.
14 Therefore, there will be an uproar in your towns, and all your strongholds will be destroyed, as Shalman destroyed Beth-arbel on the day of battle, when the mother was destroyed with the children.
15 This is what Bethel will do to you, because of your great wickedness; In the morning the king of Israel will be completely cut off.
1 When Israel was a boy, I loved him, and I called my son out of Egypt.
2 The more I called to them, the further they went from me; They sacrificed to the Baals, and offered incense to the idols.
3 With all this, I taught Ephraim himself to walk, taking him by the arms; and he didn’t know that I cared for him.
4 With human cords I drew them, with cords of love; and I was to them as those who lift the yoke from their necks, and I set food before them.
5 He will not return to the land of Egypt, but the Assyrian himself will be king over it, because they would not convert.
6 He will fall with a sword on his cities, and will consume his villages; he will consume them because of his own advice.
7 Meanwhile, my people adhere to the rebellion against me; Although they call me the Most High, absolutely no one wants to exalt me.
8 How can I abandon you, O Ephraim? Will I hand you over, Israel? How can I make you like Adma, or make you like Zeboim? My heart is moved within me, all my compassion is inflamed.
9 I will not execute the fierceness of my anger, nor will I return to destroy Ephraim; for I am God, and not man, the Holy One in your midst; and I will not enter the city.
10 They will walk after the Lord; he will roar like a lion; He will roar, and his sons will come trembling from the west.
11 They will come swiftly from Egypt like a bird, and like a dove from the land of Assyria; and I will make them dwell in their houses, says the Lord.
12 Ephraim surrounded me with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit. Judah still rules with God, and he is faithful to the saints.
1 Ephraim feeds on the wind, and follows the east wind; lies and destruction continually increase; because they made a pact with the Assyrians, and the oil was taken to Egypt.
2 The Lord has a dispute with Judah to punish Jacob according to his ways; He will repay him according to his works.
3 In the womb he took his brother by the heel, and with his power he defeated the angel.
4 He defeated the angel, and prevailed; he wept, and besought him; in Bethel he found him, and there he spoke with us.
5 But the Lord is the God of hosts; Jehovah is his name.
6 You therefore return to your God; He keeps mercy and justice, and always trusts in your God.
7 A merchant who has a false weight in his hand, a lover of oppression,
8 Ephraim said: Surely I have become rich, I have found riches for myself; No one will find iniquity in me, nor sin in all my works.
9 But I am the Lord your God from the land of Egypt; I will still make you dwell in tents, as in the days of the festival.
10 And I have spoken to the prophets, and increased the prophecy, and through the prophets I used parables.
11 Is Gilead iniquity? Certainly they have been vanity; In Gilgal they sacrificed oxen, and their altars are like heaps in the furrows of the field.
12 But Jacob fled to the land of Aram, Israel served to acquire a wife, and to acquire a woman he was a shepherd.
13 And by a prophet the Lord brought Israel up out of Egypt, and by a prophet he was preserved.
14 Ephraim has provoked God with bitterness; Therefore he will bring upon him the blood that he has shed, and his Lord will repay him for his reproach.
1 When Ephraim spoke, there was fear; he was exalted in Israel; but he sinned in Baal, and he died.
2 And now they added to his sin, and of his silver they made, according to his understanding, molten images, idols, all the work of craftsmen, concerning which they say to the men who sacrifice, to kiss the calves. .
3 Therefore they will be like the morning mist, and like the dew of the morning that passes away; like the chaff that the storm throws from the threshing floor, and like the smoke that comes out of the chimney.
4 But I am the Lord your God from the land of Egypt; You will therefore know no other god besides me, nor any other savior but me.
5 I knew you in the desert, on dry land.
6 In his pastures they were satisfied, and filled, his heart was proud; For this reason they forgot about me.
7 Therefore I will be like a lion to them; Like a leopard on the road I will stalk them.
8 I will find them like a bear that has lost her children, and I will rend the fibers of her heart, and there I will devour them like a lion; wild beast will tear them to pieces.
9 You are lost, O Israel, but your help is in me.
10 Where is your king, that he may keep you and all your cities; and your judges, of whom you said: Give me a king and princes?
11 I gave you a king in my anger, and I took him away from you in my anger.
12 The iniquity of Ephraim is bound; his sin is saved.
13 The pains of a woman giving birth will come to her; He is an unwise son, because it has been a long time since he should have stopped at the very point of being born.
14 I will redeem them from the hand of Sheol, I will deliver them from death. Oh death, I will be your death; and I will be your destruction, O Sheol; compassion will be hidden from my sight.
15 Although he bears fruit among the brothers, the east wind, the wind of the Lord, will come; It will arise from the wilderness, and its spring will dry up, and its fountain will dry up; he will plunder the treasury of all his precious jewels.
16 Samaria will be desolate, because it rebelled against its God; They will fall by the sword; her children will be dashed to pieces, and her pregnant women will be cut open.
1 Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God; because by your sin you have fallen.
2 Take with you words of supplication, and return to the LORD, and say unto him, Take away all iniquity, and accept that which is good, and we will offer thee the offering of our lips.
3 The Assyrian will not deliver us; We will not ride horses, nor will we ever again say to the work of our hands: Our Gods; because in you the orphan will find mercy.
4 I will heal his rebellion, I will love them with pure grace; for my anger has turned away from them.
5 I will be to Israel as dew; He will blossom like a lily, and his roots will spread like Lebanon.
6 Its branches will spread, and its glory will be like that of the olive tree, and it will smell like Lebanon.
7 They will return and sit under his shadow; They will be quickened like wheat, and will flourish like the vine; Its smell will be like wine from Lebanon.
8 Ephraim will say: What more will I have with the idols? I will hear it, and I will see; I will be to him like the green beech tree; Your fruit will be found from me.
9 Who is wise that he should understand this, and prudent that he should know it? For the ways of the Lord are straight, and the righteous will walk in them; but the rebels will fall among them.
