Through My Bible Yr 3 – August 4

Hosea 1

¹ The word of the LORD that came to Hosea son of Beeri during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and during the reign of Jeroboam son of Jehoash ^[a]king of Israel:

Hosea’s Wife and Children

² When the LORD began to speak through Hosea, the LORD said to him, “Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD.” ³So he married Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.

⁴ Then the LORD said to Hosea, “Call him Jezreel, because I will soon punish the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel. ⁵In that day I will break Israel’s bow in the Valley of Jezreel.”

⁶ Gomer conceived again and gave birth to a daughter. Then the LORD said to Hosea, “Call her Lo-Ruhamah, ^[b] for I will no longer show love to the house of Israel, that I should at all forgive them. ⁷Yet I will show love to the house of Judah; and I will save them—not by bow, sword or battle, or by horses and horsemen, but by the LORD their God.”

⁸ After she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, Gomer had another son. ⁹ Then the LORD said, “Call him Lo-Ammi, ^[c]for you are not my people, and I am not your God.

¹⁰ “Yet the Israelites will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted. In the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’ ¹¹The people of Judah and the people of Israel will be reunited, and they will appoint one leader and will come up out of the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel.

Hosea 2

¹“Say of your brothers, ‘My people,’ and of your sisters, ‘My loved one.’

Israel Punished and Restored

² “Rebuke your mother, rebuke her,
for she is not my wife,
and I am not her husband.
Let her remove the adulterous look from her face
and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.

³ Otherwise I will strip her naked
and make her as bare as on the day she was born;
I will make her like a desert,
turn her into a parched land,
and slay her with thirst.

⁴ I will not show my love to her children,
because they are the children of adultery.

⁵ Their mother has been unfaithful
and has conceived them in disgrace.
She said, ‘I will go after my lovers,
who give me my food and my water,
my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.’

⁶ Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes;
I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.

⁷ She will chase after her lovers but not catch them;
she will look for them but not find them.
Then she will say,
‘I will go back to my husband as at first,
for then I was better off than now.’

⁸ She has not acknowledged that I was the one
who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil,
who lavished on her the silver and gold—
which they used for Baal.

⁹ “Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens,
and my new wine when it is ready.
I will take back my wool and my linen,
intended to cover her nakedness.

¹⁰ So now I will expose her lewdness
before the eyes of her lovers;
no one will take her out of my hands.

¹¹ I will stop all her celebrations:
her yearly festivals, her New Moons,
her Sabbath days—all her appointed feasts.

¹² I will ruin her vines and her fig trees,
which she said were her pay from her lovers;
I will make them a thicket,
and wild animals will devour them.

¹³ I will punish her for the days
she burned incense to the Baals;
she decked herself with rings and jewelry,
and went after her lovers,
but me she forgot,”
declares the LORD.

¹⁴ “Therefore I am now going to allure her;
I will lead her into the desert
and speak tenderly to her.

¹⁵ There I will give her back her vineyards,
and will make the Valley of Achor ^[d] a door of hope.
There she will sing ^[e] as in the days of her youth,
as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

¹⁶ “In that day,” declares the LORD,
“you will call me ‘my husband’;
you will no longer call me ‘my master. ^[f]‘

¹⁷ I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips;
no longer will their names be invoked.

¹⁸ In that day I will make a covenant for them
with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air
and the creatures that move along the ground.
Bow and sword and battle
I will abolish from the land,
so that all may lie down in safety.

¹⁹ I will betroth you to me forever;
I will betroth you in ^[g] righteousness and justice,
in ^[h]love and compassion.

²⁰ I will betroth you in faithfulness,
and you will acknowledge the LORD.

²¹ “In that day I will respond,”
declares the LORD—
“I will respond to the skies,
and they will respond to the earth;

²² and the earth will respond to the grain,
the new wine and oil,
and they will respond to Jezreel. ^[i]

²³ I will plant her for myself in the land;
I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one. ^[j] ‘
I will say to those called ‘Not my people, ^[k] ‘ ‘You are my people’;
and they will say, ‘You are my God.’ ”

Footnotes:

1. Hosea 1:1 Hebrew Joash , a variant of Jehoash
2. Hosea 1:6 Lo-Ruhamah means not loved .
3. Hosea 1:9 Lo-Ammi means not my people .
4. Hosea 2:15 Achor means trouble .
5. Hosea 2:15 Or respond
6. Hosea 2:16 Hebrew baal
7. Hosea 2:19 Or with ; also in verse 20
8. Hosea 2:19 Or with
9. Hosea 2:22 Jezreel means God plants .
10. Hosea 2:23 Hebrew Lo-Ruhamah
11. Hosea 2:23 Hebrew Lo-Ammi

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright©1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.