UST GEN EXO LEV NUM DEU JOS JDG RUTH 1 SAM 2 SAM 1 KI 2 KI 1 CHR 2 CHR EZRA NEH EST JOB PSA PROV ECC SNG ISA JER LAM EZE DAN HOS JOEL AMOS OBA YNA MIC NAH HAB ZEP HAG ZEC MAL MAT MARK LUKE YHN ACTs ROM 1 COR 2 COR GAL EPH PHP COL 1 TH 2 TH 1 TIM 2 TIM TIT PHM HEB YAC 1 PET 2 PET 1 YHN 2 YHN 3 YHN YUD REV

HOS C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 C7 C8 C9 C10 C11 C12 C13 C14

UST HOS Chapter 10

◄ HOS 10 ► ║ ═ ©

10 The people of Israel are selfish, like a productive vine

that establishes its fruit for itself.

The more the people prospered,

the more altars they built to worship idols.

The more their land produced,

the more elaborate they made their pillars to idols.

2 The people of Israel deceive themselves;

now they must suffer for their sins.

Yahweh will be the one to tear down their altars

and smash their sacred pillars.

3 Indeed, soon they will say, “We have no king

because we did not honor Yahweh.

However, even if we had a king,

he could not do anything to help us.”

4 The people of Israel make false promises;

they swear empty oaths and make agreements that they do not keep.

So people accuse each other to the judges

and the number of these harmful legal disputes is multiplying throughout the land like poisonous weeds in a plowed field.

5 The people who live in Samaria will be afraid

about what will happen to the calf idol of Beth Aven.

Indeed, the people who worship it will mourn over it,

and the idolatrous priests who serve that idol will cry out

about it and about how splendid it was,

because it will be splendid no more.

6 The enemy will carry the idol itself to Assyria

as a gift for its king.

The people of Ephraim will be ashamed,

yes, all of the people of Israel will feel humiliated

because what they had believed and lived by was wrong.

7 The king of Samaria will be no more.

He will go away like a chip of wood floating away on the surface of the water.

8 Yahweh will destroy the places on the hilltops, like Beth Aven,

where the people of Israel sin by worshiping idols.

Thorns and weeds will grow up and cover their altars.

Then the people will beg the mountains and hills,

“Fall down on us and cover us to protect us from Yahweh!”

9 Israel, you have been sinning ever since your ancestors did those terrible things at Gibeah,

and you have continued doing such things ever since then.

War will certainly overtake all of the wicked people in Gibeah.

10 Yahweh says, “When I decide to act, I will punish them.

I will gather armies from other nations to attack them

and capture them because of their double sin.

11 The people of Ephraim were like a young cow that someone had trained

and that was happy to walk around on the stalks of grain.

Its neck was flawless because no one had ever put a yoke on it.

But for my part, I will ignore its beautiful neck.

Now I will make the people of Ephraim work hard, as though they were a young cow that I was harnessing for the first time.

It will be as though the people of Judah will have to plow,

yes, it will be as though the people of Jacob will have to break up the hard ground with no one to help them.

12 Start doing what is right, as though you were planting good seeds,

and it will be as though you were harvesting the crop from those good seeds when I reward you for being faithful to me.

Do the hard work of changing your ways as though you were plowing new ground.

Now is when you must start to know me.

Then I will come

and abundantly bless you by doing what is right for you.

13 But instead of that, you have done what is wicked, which is like planting poisonous crops,

and it is as though you have harvested and eaten those crops because what you have done has made you lie to each other and treat each other unjustly.

You did this because you deceived yourselves,

thinking that you knew the best way to do things

and that your many soldiers would protect you.

14 But they will not; your enemies will attack you,

and they will destroy all of your strong cities,

just as Shalman destroyed the city of Beth Arbel,

when his soldiers bashed mothers to death on top of their children.

15 I will do the same thing to you, people of Bethel,

because you are extremely wicked.

When the battle begins at dawn,

the enemy will completely destroy the king of Israel.

HOS C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 C7 C8 C9 C10 C11 C12 C13 C14