The Book of Hosheaʽ

1 Jehovah’s word that came to Hosheaʽ the son of Beeri in the times of Kings ʽUzzijah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, of Judah; and the beginning of Jehovah’s speaking by Hosheaʽ was in the time of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.

2 And Jehovah said to Hosheaʽ “Go take an illegitimate wife and illegitimate children, because the country is prostituting itself to desert Jehovah.” 3 And he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim. And she became pregnant and bore him a son; 4 and Jehovah said to him “Name him Jezreʽel, because in a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the bloodshed at Jezreʽel and will abolish the kingdom of the house of Israel; 5 and on that day I will break Israel’s bow in Jezreʽel Vale.”

6** And she became pregnant again and bore a daughter; and he said to him “Name her Lo-Ruhamah, because I will no longer continue to have tenderness for the house of Israel, but will hate them outright. 7* But for the house of Judah I will have tenderness, and will save them by their God Jehovah, and will not save them by bow and sword and war, by ponies and horses.”

8 And she weaned Lo-Ruhamah, and became pregnant and bore a son; 9** and he said “Name him Lo-ʽAmmi, because you are not my people and I am not your God.”

10 2:1 And the number of the sons of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, immeasurable and innumerable; and in the place where they were told “you are not my people” they shall be called “sons of living Deity.” 11** 2:2 And the sons of Judah and the sons of Israel together shall gather and elect one head and come up from the country, because great is the day of Jezreʽel.

2* 2:3 Call your brothers ʽAmmi and your sisters Ruhamah.

2 2:4 Upbraid your mother, upbraid her—because she is not my wife nor I her husband—that she remove her unchastity from her face and her adultery from between her breasts, 3 2:5 for fear I should strip her naked and set her as on the day of her birth and make her like a wilderness and render her like a dried-out country and kill her with thirst, 4 2:6 and have no tenderness for her children, because they are illegitimate children; 5 2:7 because their mother was unchaste, she whose body bred them acted shamelessly, because she thought “Let me follow my lovers that give me my bread and water, my wool and flax, my oil and drink.” 6 2:8 So I am pleaching up her road with briers and mending her fence, and she shall not find her paths; 7 2:9 and she shall pursue her lovers and not overtake them, and look for them and not find them, and think “I will go off back to my first husband, because I was better off then than now”; 8 2:10 and she had not known that it was I who gave her the grain and the grape-juice and the oil, and let her have much silver, and gold which they worked up for the Baal. 9 2:11 So I will reverse it and take back my grain at its season and my grape-juice at its date, and snatch away my wool and flax to cover her nakedness; 10 2:12 I will now uncover her indecency in sight of her lovers, and nobody shall rescue her out of my hands. 11 2:13 And I will stop all her delights, her feasts, her new moons, and her sabbaths, and all her dates, 12 2:14 and lay waste her vines and fig-trees of which she thought “They are a tip that my lovers have given me,” and make them into a scrubwood that the wild beasts will eat, 13* 2:15 and I will punish her for the days of the Baals to whom she made burnings and bejeweled herself with her nose-ring and pendant and went after her lovers and forgot me, quoth Jehovah.

14 2:16 So I am going to inveigle her and get her into the wilderness and talk of love to her, 15 2:17 and give her her vineyards from there, and Trouble Vale for a door of hope; and she shall answer there as in her days of girlhood and as on the day of her coming up out of Egypt. 16 2:18 And on that day, quoth Jehovah, you shall call me “my ish” (husband) and no longer “my baal” (liege), 17 2:19 and I will take the names of the Baals out of your mouth and they shall no longer be named. 18 2:20 And I will make a treaty with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the reptiles and insects of the ground for them on that day, and will break bow and sword and battle out of the country and have them lie down in security, 19 2:21 and will betroth you to myself forever, betroth you by honesty and justice and friendliness and tenderness, 20 2:22 betroth you by loyalty, and you shall know Jehovah. 21 2:23 And on that day I will answer, quoth Jehovah, I will answer the sky and it shall answer the earth 22* 2:24 and the earth shall answer the grain and the grape-juice and the oil and they shall answer Jezreʽel; 23** 2:25 and I will seed her in the country for myself, and be tender to Her-For-Whom-There-Was-No-Tenderness, and say to Not-My-People “You are my people,“ and he shall say “My God.”

3 And Jehovah said to me “Again go love a woman loved by a paramour and living an adulterous life, as Jehovah loves the sons of Israel while they face toward other gods and love cakes of raisins.” 2 And I purchased her for fifteen shekels of silver and twelve bushels of barley, 3* and said to her “You shall stay mine a long time, never be debauched nor let a man have you; and I on my part will give my attentions to you.” 4 For the sons of Israel shall stay a long time without king and without general and without sacrifice and without obelisk and without ephod and teraphim; 5 afterward the sons of Israel shall come back and look up their God Jehovah and their king David, and pay timid homage to Jehovah and his goodness in the future days.

4 Listen to Jehovah’s word, sons of Israel, because Jehovah has a case against the inhabitants of the country, because there is no loyalty and no friendship and no knowledge of God in the country; 2 swearing and lying, and murdering and stealing, and adultery; they live by violence, and bloodshed treads on the heels of bloodshed. 3 On this account the country is to mourn and all who live in it to be forlorn, beasts of the field and birds of the air and all, and the very fishes of the sea are to draw out of the way. 4* Only let not any man fight the case, let not any man reprimand—your people are the sort that fight a case with a priest. 5 And you shall stumble today, and a prophet too with you shall stumble in the night; and I will cut off your mother. 6 My people is cut off because of not knowing. Because you have rejected knowledge I have rejected you from being priest to me; you have forgotten your God’s instructions, I on my part will forget your sons. 7 The more there were of them the more they sinned against me—I will substitute contempt for your honors. 8 They eat my people’s sin and fix their appetite on its guilt. 9 And the priest will be the same as the people, and I will punish him for his courses and send retribution for his practices. 10 And they shall eat and not feel full, live licentiously and not be prolific, because they have left Jehovah, 11 faithfully keeping up unchastity and wine and grape-juice that take away the brain. 12 My people puts questions to its bit of wood, and its staff informs it, because a spirit of prostitution has misled them and they have gone from under Jehovah into prostitution. 13 They sacrifice on the mountaintops and make burnings on the hilltops, under oak and storax and terebinth, because their shade is good. Therefore your daughters prostitute themselves and your daughters-in-law take to adultery. 14* I will not punish your daughters because they prostitute themselves nor your daughters-in-law because they take to adultery, for those men themselves go apart with loose women and sacrifice with religious prostitutes; and an unintelligent class lets itself be hustled down. 15* If you, Israel, are unchaste, let Judah not incur guilt. And do not go into the Gilgal nor up to Beth-Aven, nor swear “By Jehovah.” 16* For Israel has been balking like a balky cow—now Jehovah is to pasture them like a sheep in the open! 17 Ephraim is partner with idols; let him alone. 18* Their drink passes off, they take to lechery; her shields do love contempt. 19 A wind has bundled her up in its wings, and they shall be ashamed of their altars.

5* Listen to this, priests, and pay attention, house of Israel, and give ear, house of the king, because justice is your business, but you have been a snare at Mispah and a spread net on Tabor 2* and a deep pit at Shittim, and none of them have anybody to turn them off. 3 I know about Ephraim, and about Israel it is not kept dark from me, how you, Ephraim, are now taking part in prostitution, Israel is being defiled; 4 their practices will not let them come back to their God, because they have within them a spirit of unchastity and do not know Jehovah. 5 And Israel’s pride testifies to his face; and Israel and Ephraim stumble by their guilt, Judah too stumbles with them. 6 With their sheep and horned cattle they go looking for Jehovah and do not find him; he has taken himself out of their way. 7* They have played Jehovah false, because they have been having alien children; now a new moon will eat up their portions.

8* Blow a ram-horn at Gibeah, a trumpet at Ramah; sound an alarm at Beth-Aven; they are after you, Benjamin! 9 Ephraim shall become a desolation on a day of chastisement; among the tribes of Israel I give reliable notice. 10 Judah’s generals have been like those that displace a boundary-mark; I will pour out my wrath on them like water.

11* Ephraim is denied justice, is persecuted in judgment, because they insisted on following a mandate. 12 And I am like a moth to Ephraim, and like dry-rot to the house of Judah. 13** And Ephraim saw its disease, and Judah its festering; and Ephraim went to Assyria and sent to King Jareb, but he will not be able to cure you nor you get over festering. 14 For I am like a lion to Ephraim, like a two-year-old lion to the house of Judah; I, I, I pounce and go, 15 I carry off and nobody rescues, back to my place I go, till they pay up their penalty and seek my face; when they are in distress they will go in quest of me.

6* Come, let us get back to Jehovah, because it was his pounce maimed us, he wounds and will bandage us. 2* He will make us well in two days, the third day he will have us standing up, to be alive before him and know him. 3** Let us strive to know Jehovah; like gray dawn, his coming up is ready; and he will come to us like rain, like spring rains watering earth.

4 What shall I do with you, Ephraim? what shall I do with you, Judah? your friendliness is like a morning cloud and like dew that goes off the first thing in the morning. 5 Therefore I have hewed with prophets, killed them with the say of my mouth; and my judgment comes out like daylight, 6 that I take pleasure in friendliness, not in sacrifice, and in acquaintance with God rather than in burnt-offerings. 7* But they have broken treaty at Adam; there they have played me false; 8* Gilead is a town of villains, tracked with blood; 9* and as a man hides seed-corn priests have hid my ways; they have murdered at Shekem because they were committing enormity. 10* In the house of Israel I have seen a horror; there Ephraim had prostitution, Israel was defiled; 11** Judah too has fixed a harvest for you.

7 When I am coming back to my people, when I am healing Israel, Ephraim’s guilt is laid bare, and Samaria’s mischiefs; for they practice falsehood, thief comes in, raiders are on the foray outside. 2 And they do not say to themselves I have remembered all their viciousness, their practices are besetting them now, they are under my eye. 3* In their wickedness they make a king merry, in their deceitfulness generals; 4* they are all carrying on adultery. They are like a baking-crock with a fire in it, whose baker leaves off quickening it up from the kneading of dough till it rises. 5* On our king’s day they have made generals sick with heat from wine; he dragged his hand with cynics. 6* For they brought their hearts on like a baking-crock in their ambush; all night their anger is asleep, in the morning it burns like a blazing fire. 7 They all grow hot like a baking-crock, and eat up their judges: all their kings have fallen, there is no one that calls on me among them.

8 Ephraim is getting stirred in among the nations; Ephraim has come to be an unturned cake. 9* Outsiders have eaten up his strength without his knowing it; even white hair has shot up on him, without his knowing it. 10 And Israel’s pride testifies to his face; and they have not gone back to their God Jehovah, nor looked to find him, for all this. 11 And Ephraim has come to be like a brainless unwary pigeon: they call Egypt, they go to Assyria. 12* While they are going I will spread my net over them, bring them down like birds of the air, cage them for trouble like quails. 13 It is woe to them, because they have lost touch with me; it is spoliation for them, because they have rebelled against me; and I was ransoming them and they made lying talk against me, 14*** and they did not cry to me in their hearts when they were howling on their beds, lodging away from home on account of grain and grape-juice, turning in to lodge with me. 15* And I had disciplined, strengthened their arms, and they were thinking up evil against me. 16** They turned back to the Baal; they have become like an unreliable bow; their generals are falling by the sword owing to the hostility of their tongue (that is, their scurrilous language). In their own country foes oppress them;

8* they fly like a vulture against Jehovah’s house—since they have violated my covenant and been rebellious against my instructions. 2 They cry to me “My God”; we know you, Israel.

3 Israel has repudiated what is good; an enemy will pursue them. 4 They have set up kings, but not from me; a government, and I did not know it. Their silver and gold they have made into idols, to have it swept away. 5 Your calf, Samaria, is repudiated; I am angry with them—how long will they be incapable of innocence? 6* because it comes from Israel, a mechanic has made it, it is not a god.—For Samaria’s calf shall go to splinters. 7* For they sow wind and reap whirlwind; it all has no stalk, a greenery that will yield no meal—or if it should, outsiders would swallow it.

8 Israel is swallowed up; now they have become among the nations like an unwanted piece of furniture. 9* For they have gone up to Assyria, a wild ass running alone; to Egypt they have given love-gifts. 10* When they do give among the nations, now I will gather them and they shall begin a small part of the burden of the king of princes. 11* Because Ephraim has made many altars for sin-offerings, they have had them as altars for offering sins. 12* I would write down for them my multitudinous instructions; they have been rated a sickening thing. 13* They sacrifice meat as broiled sacrifices and eat it; Jehovah has not accepted them; now he will remember their guilt and punish their sins: they shall go back to Egypt. 14* And Israel has forgotten his Maker and built temples, and Judah has fortified many a city; but I will send a fire into his cities and it shall devour his palaces.

9 Do not make merry exultantly like the peoples, Israel, because you have prostituted yourself to be disloyal to Jehovah; you have loved the prostitute’s gain on every threshing-floor of grain. 2 Threshing-floor and wine-vat shall not feed them, and grape-juice shall disappoint them; 3 they shall not live in Jehovah’s country, but Ephraim shall go back to Egypt and they shall eat unclean food in Assyria. 4** They shall not pour libations of wine to Jehovah, not lay out their sacrifices for him; their sacrifices shall be to them like trouble-bread, whose eaters all become unclean, because their bread is for their appetites, it is not to come into Jehovah’s house. 5 What will you do on the anniversary day, the day of Jehovah’s feasts? 6** because they are gone owing to rapine, Egypt is to gather them, Memphis is to bury them; their silver attractions nettles shall possess, briers be in their homes. 7* The days of punishment have come, the days of retribution have come, Israel shall know; the prophet is an ignoramus, the inspired man a lunatic, because of the excess of your guilt. 8 Ephraim’s watchman with my God suffers great spite; the prophet has fowlers’ traps on all his paths, spite in his God’s house; they have dug his pit deep. 9* As in Gibeah’s days he will remember their guilt, will punish their sins.

10*** I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness, I saw your fathers like an early fig on the tree at the first of its crop; they came to Baal-Peghor and performed rites to the Shame and became objects of disgust as they loved to. 11* Ephraim’s glories are taking flight like a bird: off from birth, off from expectations of birth. 12* If they do raise their children I will bereave them of every human being; yea, woe to them when I go back from them. 13* Ephraim has stocked himself with daughters for a foe; Ephraim has to bring out his sons to a killer. 14 Give them, Jehovah—what will you give? give them a miscarrying womb and shriveled breasts. 15 All their wickedness is at the Gilgal; because there I learned to hate them for the viciousness of their practices, I will expel them from my house, will love them no longer; all their generals are incorrigibles. 16 Ephraim is smitten; their roots are dried up, no fruit will they produce. Even if they have T children I will bring death to their welcome offspring. 17 My God will reject them because they did not listen to him, and they shall be wanderers among the nations.

10* Israel is a luxuriant grapevine that loads itself with fruit. The more he had of fruit, the more he made of altars; the better off his country, the finer he made obelisks. 2 Their hearts are slippery. Now they must smart for it; he will break the necks of their altars, make havoc of their obelisks. 3 For now they will be saying “We have no king, because we do not fear Jehovah and what will the king do to us?” 4** —talking and talking, taking empty oaths, making covenants, and justice shooting up like poppies in furrows in the field. 5* The denizens of Samaria shall quail for the calf of Beth-Aven because his people and his komers are mourning for him, they howl for him because of his glory, because it is deported from him. 6* It too shall be taken to Assyria for a present to King Jareb; Ephraim shall take a humiliation, Israel be put to shame for its policy. 7* Samaria is cut off; her king is like a chip on the face of water. 8 And the heights of Aven, the sin of Israel, shall be extirpated; thorns and thistles shall grow up on their altars; and they shall say to the mountains “Cover us” and to the hills “Fall on us.”

9 Since the days of Gibeah you have sinned, Israel: there they stood, war was not to come home to them at Gibeah. 10* I have come against men of foul play to chastise them, and peoples shall be brought together against them, for their going off to their two crimes. 11 And Ephraim is a trained heifer that loves to thresh and I myself have passed over her fine neck; I will harness Ephraim; Judah shall plow, Jacob shall harrow for him. 12* Sow with honesty, reap in the way of friendliness, break new ground, and it is time to resort to Jehovah till he comes and gives you autumn rain of righteousness. 13* You have been plowing lawlessness, reaping foul play, eating the fruit of deceitfulness, because you have had confidence in your course, in the numerousness of your champions; 14** and yells shall rise in your cities, and all your fortress towns shall be sacked as Shalman sacked Beth-Arbel on a battle-day, mothers’ brains dashed out after their children’s: 15* I will do the like to you, house of Israel, because of your wicked wickedness; the king of Israel is cut off in the gray dawn.

11* When Israel was a child I loved him, and I called his sons out of Egypt. 2** The more I called them, the more they went off from me: they sacrificed to the Baals, they made burnings to the carvings. 3 And I had taught Ephraim to walk, taken them in my arms; but they did not know I healed them. 4*** I drew them with human lines, with ropes of love, and was to them like one that lifts up a yoke on their cheeks; and I bent down to it, mastered it. 5 He goes back to Egypt, and Assyria is his king, because they refused to come back. 6** And swords dance in his cities and annihilate his bragging, and their designs eat them up. 7*** And his people are dangling with his apostasies; they call him upward, not a bit does he mount.

8* How am I to give you away, Ephraim, to hand you over, Israel? How am I to make you like Admah, render you like Seboim? the thought overwhelms me, my sympathies are all in a fever. 9* I will not act out my anger, I will not go back to making away with Ephraim; for I am deity, not man, a Holy one in your midst, and will not come in passion. 10 They shall go after Jehovah like a lion that roars; for he will roar, and sons will be startled from the sea, 11 they will be startled from Egypt like a sparrow and from Assyria like a pigeon, and I will settle them in their homes, quoth Jehovah.

12* 12:1Ephraim encircles me with deceit, and the house of Israel with fraud, but Judah is still ranging with Deity and faithful with the Holy.

12** 12:2 Ephraim is a wind-eater, an east-wind-chaser; all day long they pile up lies and shams, and they make treaties with Assyria and take oil to Egypt. 2 12:3 Jehovah has a quarrel with Judah, to give Jacob a punishment to match his courses, a return to match his practices. 3* 12:4 In his mother’s body he caught his brother’s heel, and in his prime he struggled with God; 4 12:5 he struggled with an angel and succeeded; he wept and begged him for grace; he was to find him at Bethel and there he was to speak with him. 5 12:6 But Jehovah is the God of Armies; Jehovah is his proper name; 6* 12:7 and you are to come back by your God. Attend to friendliness and justice, and hope toward your God always.

7 12:8 Canaan has cheating balances in his hands; he loves to overreach. 8 12:9 And Ephraim thinks “I have got downright rich, I have made a fortune”; all that he has got by his work will not suffice for the guilt he has incurred. 9 12:10 But I am your God Jehovah since Egypt; I will set you to living in tents again as you do in the days of an annual feast, 10* 12:11 and I will speak to prophets, having myself given many a vision, and by prophets I will whisper.

11** 12:12 If Gilead is villainy, they have become downright futile; at the Gilgal they sacrifice to demons; yes, and their altars are like stone-heaps over furrows in the field. 12* 12:13 And Jacob emigrated to the plains of Syria, and Israel worked for a wife, and for a wife he kept guard; 13 12:14 and by a prophet Jehovah brought Israel up from Egypt, and by a prophet he was guarded. 14 12:15 Ephraim has given bitter provocation, and his Lord will leave his blood on him and return his taunts to him.

13 When Ephraim spoke he made Israel’s hair stand on end; but he incurred guilt by the Baal, and he died. 2 And now they go on sinning and have made themselves figures in idol form out of their silver, all artisans’ work; “to them,” say they, “sacrifice”; men kiss calves. 3 So they shall be like a morning cloud and like dew that goes off the first thing in the morning, like chaff driving off a threshing-floor and like smoke out of a smoke-hole.

4 But I am your God Jehovah since Egypt, and you are not to know any God but me, and beside me there is no savior. 5* I knew you in the wilderness, in a country of parching drought. 6 When they had pasture they ate their fill; they ate their fill and their hearts went high; therefore they forgot me. 7 And I became like a lion to them, gazing like a leopard by a road, 8** meeting with them like a bear that has lost its cubs, to tear their chests and eat them there like a lioness and have the wild beasts rip them up. 9 You are ruined, Israel, for who is your help? 10* Where is your king to save you, and all your generals to do you justice, that you said “Give me a king and generals”? 11* I give you a king in my anger and take him from you in my wrath. 12 Ephraim’s guilt is packed up, his sin is laid by. 13 A mother’s birth-pains are coming for him; he is an unwise son, for it is time children should not stop in the mouth of the womb. 14* I was to redeem them out of the hands of the grave, to bring them off out of death. Up with your pestilences, death! up with your poison, grave! compunction is shrouded from my sight. 15* For he is spreading among the fengrass; an east wind comes, Jehovah’s wind, rising from the wilderness, and dries out his vein of water and dries off his spring. That one will pillage the whole hoard of choice articles; 16 Samaria will expiate its guilt because it disobeyed its God; they will fall in warfare, their children’s brains will be dashed out and their pregnant women cut open.

14* Come back, Israel, to your God, because you came to grief by your guilt. 2* Take words with you and say to him “You win; pardon guilt and take goodwill, and we will pay fruit from our lips. 3* Assyria shall not save us, we will not ride ponies, nor will we again say ‘Our God’ to work of our hands, when it is in you an orphan finds mercy.” 4 I will cure their apostasy, I will love them eagerly, because my anger is turned back from them. 5 I will be like the dew to Israel; he shall bud like the lily and strike his roots like the Lebanon; 6** his sprouts shall spread, and his sightliness shall be like the olive-tree’s, with a scent like the Lebanon’s. 7***** They shall come back to sitting in his shadow; they shall be watered like a garden, to be like a grapevine whose record is like Lebanon wine. 8** What does Ephraim want of idols anymore? I answered him, I eye him like a green cypress, from me your fruit is found.

9 Who is wise? let him understand these things; intelligent? let him know them; for Jehovah’s paths are straight, and honest men will walk in them, but rogues will stumble in them.

MARGINAL NOTES TO HOSHEAʽ