God Speaks
4 Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel!
The Lord has brought charges against you, saying:
“There is no faithfulness, no kindness,
no knowledge of God in your land.
2 You make vows and break them;
you kill and steal and commit adultery.
There is violence everywhere—
one murder after another.
3 That is why your land is in mourning,
and everyone is wasting away.
Even the wild animals, the birds of the sky,
and the fish of the sea are disappearing.
4 “Don’t point your finger at someone else
and try to pass the blame!
My complaint, you priests,
is with you.
5 So you will stumble in broad daylight,
and your false prophets will fall with you in the night.
And I will destroy Israel, your mother.
6 My people are being destroyed
because they don’t know me.
Since you priests refuse to know me,
I refuse to recognize you as my priests.
Since you have forgotten the laws of your God,
I will forget to bless your children.
7 The more priests there are,
the more they sin against me.
They have exchanged the glory of God
for the shame of idols.
8 “When the people bring their sin offerings, the priests get fed.
So the priests are glad when the people sin!
9 ‘And what the priests do, the people also do.’
So now I will punish both priests and people
for their wicked deeds.
10 They will eat and still be hungry.
They will play the prostitute and gain nothing from it,
for they have deserted the Lord
11 to worship other gods.
“Wine has robbed my people
of their understanding.
12 They ask a piece of wood for advice!
They think a stick can tell them the future!
Longing after idols
has made them foolish.
They have played the prostitute,
serving other gods and deserting their God.
13 They offer sacrifices to idols on the mountaintops.
They go up into the hills to burn incense
in the pleasant shade of oaks, poplars, and terebinth trees.
“That is why your daughters turn to prostitution,
and your daughters-in-law commit adultery.
14 But why should I punish them
for their prostitution and adultery?
For your men are doing the same thing,
sinning with whores and shrine prostitutes.
O foolish people! You refuse to understand,
so you will be destroyed.
15 “Though you, Israel, are a prostitute,
may Judah not be guilty of such things.
Do not join the false worship at Gilgal or Beth-aven,
and do not take oaths there in the Lord’s name.
16 Israel is stubborn,
like a stubborn heifer.
So should the Lord feed her
like a lamb in a lush pasture?
17 Leave Israel alone,
because she is married to idolatry.
18 When the rulers of Israel finish their drinking,
off they go to find some prostitutes.
They love shame more than honor.
19 So a mighty wind will sweep them away.
Their sacrifices to idols will bring them shame.
5 “Hear this, you priests.
Pay attention, you leaders of Israel.
Listen, you members of the royal family.
Judgment has been handed down against you.
For you have led the people into a snare
by worshiping the idols at Mizpah and Tabor.
2 You have dug a deep pit to trap them at Acacia Grove.
But I will settle with you for what you have done.
3 I know what you are like, O Ephraim.
You cannot hide yourself from me, O Israel.
You have left me as a prostitute leaves her husband;
you are utterly defiled.
4 Your deeds won’t let you return to your God.
You are a prostitute through and through,
and you do not know the Lord.
5 “The arrogance of Israel testifies against her;
Israel and Ephraim will stumble under their load of guilt.
Judah, too, will fall with them.
6 When they come with their flocks and herds
to offer sacrifices to the Lord,
they will not find him,
because he has withdrawn from them.
7 They have betrayed the honor of the Lord,
bearing children that are not his.
Now their false religion will devour them
along with their wealth.
8 “Sound the alarm in Gibeah!
Blow the trumpet in Ramah!
Raise the battle cry in Beth-aven!
Lead on into battle, O warriors of Benjamin!
9 One thing is certain, Israel:
On your day of punishment,
you will become a heap of rubble.
10 “The leaders of Judah have become like thieves.
So I will pour my anger on them like a waterfall.
11 The people of Israel will be crushed and broken by my judgment
because they are determined to worship idols.
12 I will destroy Israel as a moth consumes wool.
I will make Judah as weak as rotten wood.
13 “When Israel and Judah saw how sick they were,
Israel turned to Assyria—
to the great king there—
but he could neither help nor cure them.
14 I will be like a lion to Israel,
like a strong young lion to Judah.
I will tear them to pieces!
I will carry them off,
and no one will be left to rescue them.
15 Then I will return to my place
until they admit their guilt and turn to me.
For as soon as trouble comes,
they will earnestly search for me.”
6 “Come, let us return to the Lord.
He has torn us to pieces;
now he will heal us.
He has injured us;
now he will bandage our wounds.
2 In just a short time he will restore us,
so that we may live in his presence.
3 Oh, that we might know the Lord!
Let us press on to know him.
He will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn
or the coming of rains in early spring.”
4 “O Israel and Judah,
what should I do with you?” asks the Lord.
“For your love vanishes like the morning mist
and disappears like dew in the sunlight.
5 I sent my prophets to cut you to pieces—
to slaughter you with my words,
with judgments as inescapable as light.
6 I want you to show love,
not offer sacrifices.
I want you to know me
more than I want burnt offerings.
7 But like Adam, you broke my covenant
and betrayed my trust.
8 “Gilead is a city of sinners,
tracked with footprints of blood.
9 Priests form bands of robbers,
waiting in ambush for their victims.
They murder travelers along the road to Shechem
and practice every kind of sin.
10 Yes, I have seen something horrible in Ephraim and Israel:
My people are defiled by prostituting themselves with other gods!
11 “O Judah, a harvest of punishment is also waiting for you,
though I wanted to restore the fortunes of my people.
7 “I want to heal Israel, but its sins are too great.
Samaria is filled with liars.
Thieves are on the inside
and bandits on the outside!
2 Its people don’t realize
that I am watching them.
Their sinful deeds are all around them,
and I see them all.
3 “The people entertain the king with their wickedness,
and the princes laugh at their lies.
4 They are all adulterers,
always aflame with lust.
They are like an oven that is kept hot
while the baker is kneading the dough.
5 On royal holidays, the princes get drunk with wine,
carousing with those who mock them.
6 Their hearts are like an oven
blazing with intrigue.
Their plot smolders through the night,
and in the morning it breaks out like a raging fire.
7 Burning like an oven,
they consume their leaders.
They kill their kings one after another,
and no one cries to me for help.
8 “The people of Israel mingle with godless foreigners,
making themselves as worthless as a half-baked cake!
9 Worshiping foreign gods has sapped their strength,
but they don’t even know it.
Their hair is gray,
but they don’t realize they’re old and weak.
10 Their arrogance testifies against them,
yet they don’t return to the Lord their God
or even try to find him.
11 “The people of Israel have become like silly, witless doves,
first calling to Egypt, then flying to Assyria for help.
12 But as they fly about,
I will throw my net over them
and bring them down like a bird from the sky.
I will punish them for all the evil they do.
13 “What sorrow awaits those who have deserted me!
Let them die, for they have rebelled against me.
I wanted to redeem them,
but they have told lies about me.
14 They do not cry out to me with sincere hearts.
Instead, they sit on their couches and wail.
They cut themselves, begging foreign gods for grain and new wine,
and they turn away from me.
15 I trained them and made them strong,
yet now they plot evil against me.
16 They look everywhere except to the Most High.
They are as useless as a crooked bow.
Their leaders will be killed by their enemies
because of their insolence toward me.
Then the people of Egypt
will laugh at them.
Source: New Living Translation: BibleGateway.com
We Respond
Reflection: Hosea 4: God, the Judge, lays out the indictment against His wayward people. Israel (the northern kingdom) has broken the rules God laid down in the Garden of Eden and in the Ten Commandments. Everyone blames someone else.
Hosea 5: God holds the leaders more responsible than the individual people.
Hosea 6: The people of Israel determined to return to the LORD in hopes that He will heal them, but they failed to do so.
Hosea 7: This chapter gives us word pictures of how God’s people are acting toward Him and other people: highway robbers, court jesters, bakers’ ovens, half-cooked pancakes, flighty birds, self-cutters, faulty bows, and butts of jokes.
Prayer: Dear LORD God, You are the husband, provider, and protector of each believer as well as the nation that follows You. Please, by Your mercy and grace, forgive our sins. Among these are our lack of faithfulness, kindness, and knowledge of You, LORD God. We make vows only to break them. We steal, kill, and commit adultery. There is violence and murder throughout the land. There is great pollution of land, water, and air. Animals, birds, fish, and humans are dying because we are not managing the earth as You instructed us. The blame for all of this wrongdoing lies on both individuals and leaders in government, business, education, media, families, culture, and religion. I agree, Your people are being destroyed because we do not know You or follow your ways. Because we refuse to acknowledge You, You have every right to refuse our pleas and requests. We have exchanged Your glory for the shame of idols. Our worship is not sincere and is not received with sincere motives by the priests. We are foolish people seeking after false gods; therefore, we will be destroyed. O LORD, help those who love You not be drawn in the wrong direction, away from You. You hold leaders more responsible than their followers. You know what we are genuinely like and see what we try to hide. Just trying to do good won’t get us back to You, LORD God. We stumble under our load of guilt. We have betrayed Your honor. May the true people of God wake up and sound the warning so that the nation will not be destroyed. Please, don’t let us turn to other nations, gods, and ideologies (away from You) for help, for then You will have to use strong measures to restore us. Let us come together and seek You, LORD, before it is too late. Please help us to carry through on our decisions to return to trusting and obeying You and following Your ways. Help us instead to be generous givers, speakers of truth and love, even-tempered, nourishers, those who calmly reassure, true and strong weapons in Your hands, and encouragers who build up others. All of this to honor our great and gracious husband, God. AMEN
Action: (Ask God, the Holy Spirit, if He wants you to work on one of the suggestions below or something else more personal that He points out.)
- I will confess the sins of myself and my nation to God and to other people as appropriate.
- I will keep a vow or a promise I made to a specific person or to God.
- I will plan to take better care of the living things God has put in my life, then carry it out.
- I will check my own life and motives and then speak with a friend about how they can be free of the load of guilt they are carrying by trusting and obeying Jesus.
Share: I plan to share what I’ve learned with __________.