Hosea

And YHWH said to him: “Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little and I will avenge the bloodshed of Jezreel on the house of Jehu, and I will bring to an end the kingdom of the house of Israel.

And [on] the house of Judah I will have compassion, and I will save them, by YHWH their God; I will not save them by bow, or by sword, or by battle, by horses, or by horsemen.”

Plead with your⁺ mother—plead, for she [is] not My wife, and I [am] not her Husband—that she might turn aside her prostitution from her face, and her adultery from between her breasts,

lest I strip her naked, and expose her like the day of her being born, and make her like the desert, and set her like a parched land, and kill her with thirst!

And I will not show compassion [to] her children, for they [are] sons of prostitution.

Therefore, behold, I am hedging up your path with thorns; and I will wall her up with a wall, so her paths she cannot find.

And she will pursue her lovers, and she will not overtake them; she will seek them, and she will not find [them]. She will say, ‘I will go and return to my first husband, for [it was] better for me then than now!’

Hear the word of YHWH, O sons of Israel, for a case [is] unto YHWH against those dwelling in the land: “For there is no truth, and there is no loving devotion, and there is no knowledge of God in the land.

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge, because you have rejected knowledge, and I will reject you from being priest unto Me; and you have forgotten the law of your God; I will forget your children also.

My people consult with a piece of wood, and their staff declares [it] to them; for the spirit of prostitution has led them astray, and they have prostituted themselves from under their God.

Ephraim is oppressed, crushed in judgment, because he was willing to walk after worthless idols.

And they, like Adam, transgressed the covenant; there they were unfaithful with Me.

Were I to write for him the myriad [things] of My law, they would be regarded as a strange thing.

They have spoken words, swearing falsely [in] cutting a covenant, and judgment sprouts up like a poison in the furrows of the field.

A Canaanite [has] scales of deceit in his hand; he loves to oppress.

Take with you⁺ words, and return to YHWH. Say to Him: “Lift away all iniquity, and receive what is good, and we offer the fruit of our lips.

I will heal their backsliding, I will love them willingly; for My anger has turned back from him.