Hosea 8-10

Hosea 8

¹Put the horn to your mouth. He comes like an eagle against the house of the Lord; because they have gone against my agreement, they have not kept my law.

²They will send up to me a cry for help: We, Israel, have knowledge of you, O God of Israel.

³Israel has given up what is good; his haters will go after him.

⁴They have put up kings, but not by me; they have made princes, but I had no knowledge of it; they have made images of silver and gold, so that they may be cut off.

⁵I will have nothing to do with your young ox, O Samaria; my wrath is burning against them; how long will it be before the children of Israel make themselves clean?

⁶The workman made it, it is no god; the ox of Samaria will be broken into bits.

⁷For they have been planting the wind, and their fruit will be the storm; his grain has no stem, it will give no meal, and if it does, a strange nation will take it.

⁸Israel has come to destruction; now they are among the nations like a cup in which there is no pleasure.

⁹For they have gone up to Assyria like an ass going by himself; Ephraim has given money to get lovers.

¹⁰But though they give money to the nations for help, still I will send them in all directions; and in a short time they will be without a king and rulers.

¹¹Because Ephraim has been increasing altars for sin, altars have become a cause of sin to him.

¹²Though I put my law in writing for him in ten thousand rules, they are to him as a strange thing.

¹³He gives the offerings of his lovers, and takes the flesh for food; but the Lord has no pleasure in them; now he will keep in mind their evil-doing and give them the punishment of their sins; they will go back to Egypt.

¹⁴For Israel has no memory of his Maker, and has put up the houses of kings; and Judah has made great the number of his walled towns. But I will send a fire on his towns and put an end to his great houses.

Hosea 9

¹Have no joy, O Israel, and do not be glad like the nations; for you have been untrue to your God; your desire has been for the loose woman's reward on every grain-floor.

²The grain-floor and the place where the grapes are crushed will not give them food; there will be no new wine for them.

³They will have no resting-place in the Lord's land, but Ephraim will go back to Egypt, and they will take unclean food in Assyria.

⁴They will give no wine offering to the Lord, they will not make offerings ready for him; their bread will be like the bread of those in sorrow; all who take it will be unclean, because their bread will be only for their desire, it will not come into the house of the Lord.

⁵What will you do on the day of worship, and on the day of the feast of the Lord?

⁶For see, they are going away into Assyria; Egypt will get them together, Memphis will be their last resting-place; their fair silver vessels will be covered over with field plants, and thorns will come up in their tents.

⁷The days of punishment, the days of reward are come; Israel will be put to shame; the prophet is foolish, the man who has the spirit is off his head, because of your great sin.

⁸There is great hate against the watchman of Ephraim, the people of my God; as for the prophet, there is a net in all his ways, and hate in the house of his God.

⁹They have gone deep in evil as in the days of Gibeah; he will keep in mind their wrongdoing, he will give them punishment for their sins.

¹⁰I made discovery of Israel as of grapes in the waste land; I saw your fathers as the first-fruits of the fig-tree in her early fruit time; but they came to Baal-peor, and made themselves holy to the thing of shame, and became disgusting like that to which they gave their love.

¹¹As for Ephraim, their glory will go in flight like a bird: there will be no birth and no one with child and no giving of life.

¹²Even though their children have come to growth I will take them away, so that not a man will be there; for their evil-doing will be complete and they will be put to shame because of it.

¹³As I have seen a beast whose young have been taken from her, so Ephraim will give birth to children only for them to be put to death.

¹⁴O Lord, what will you give them? Give them bodies which may not give birth and breasts without milk.

¹⁵All their evil-doing is in Gilgal; there I had hate for them; because of their evil-doing I will send them out of my house; they will no longer be dear to me; all their rulers are uncontrolled.

¹⁶The rod has come on Ephraim, their root is dry, let them have no fruit; even though they give birth, I will put to death the dearest fruit of their bodies.

¹⁷My God will give them up because they did not give ear to him; they will be wandering among the nations.

Hosea 10

¹Israel is a branching vine, full of fruit; as his fruit is increased, so the number of his altars is increased; as the land is fair, so they have made fair pillars.

²Their mind is taken away; now they will be made waste: he will have their altars broken down, he will give their pillars to destruction.

³Now, truly, they will say, We have no king, we have no fear of the Lord; and the king, what is he able to do for us?

⁴Their words are foolish; they make agreements with false oaths, so punishment will come up like a poison-plant in a ploughed field.

⁵The people of Samaria will be full of fear because of the ox of Beth-aven; its people will have sorrow for it, and its priests will give cries of grief for its glory, for the glory has gone in flight.

⁶And they will take it to Assyria and give it to the great king; shame will come on Ephraim, and Israel will be shamed because of its image.

⁷As for Samaria, her king is cut off, like mist on the water.

⁸And the high places of Aven, the sin of Israel, will come to destruction; thorns and waste plants will come up on their altars; they will say to the mountains, Be a cover over us; and to the hills, Come down on us.

⁹O Israel, you have done evil from the days of Gibeah; there they took up their position, so that the fighting against the children of evil might not overtake them in Gibeah.

¹⁰I will come and give them punishment; and the peoples will come together against them when I give them the reward of their two sins.

¹¹And Ephraim is a trained cow, taking pleasure in crushing the grain; but I have put a yoke on her fair neck; I will put a horseman on the back of Ephraim; Judah will be working the plough, Jacob will be turning up the earth.

¹²Put in the seed of righteousness, get in your grain in mercy, let your unploughed earth be turned up: for it is time to make search for the Lord, till he comes and sends righteousness on you like rain.

¹³You have been ploughing sin, you have got in a store of evil, the fruit of deceit has been your food: for you put faith in your way, in the number of your men of war.

¹⁴So a great outcry will go up from among your people, and all your strong places will be broken, as Beth-arbel was broken by Shalman in the day of war, as the mother was broken on the rocks with her children.

¹⁵So will Beth-el do to you because of your evil-doing; at dawn will the king of Israel be cut off completely.