Hosea 5-6

The Message

They Wouldn’t Recognize God If They Saw Him

5 ^1-2“Listen to this, priests!
    Attention, people of Israel!
Royal family—all ears!
    You’re in charge of justice around here.
But what have you done? Exploited people at Mizpah,
    ripped them off on Tabor,
Victimized them at Shittim.
    I’m going to punish the lot of you.

^3-4“I know you, Ephraim, inside and out.
    Yes, Israel, I see right through you!
Ephraim, you’ve played your sex-and-religion games long enough.
    All Israel is thoroughly polluted.
They couldn’t turn to God if they wanted to.
    Their evil life is a bad habit.
Every breath they take is a whore’s breath.
    They wouldn’t recognize God if they saw me.

^5-7“Bloated by arrogance, big as a house,
    they’re a public disgrace,
The lot of them—Israel, Ephraim, Judah—
    lurching and weaving down their guilty streets.
When they decide to get their lives together
    and go off looking for God once again,
They’ll find it’s too late.
    I, God, will be long gone.
They’ve played fast and loose with me for too long,
    filling the country with their bastard offspring.
A plague of locusts will
    devastate their violated land.

^8-9“Blow the ram’s horn shofar in Gibeah,
    the bugle in Ramah!
Signal the invasion of Sin City!
    Scare the daylights out of Benjamin!
Ephraim will be left wasted,
    a lifeless moonscape.
I’m telling it straight, the unvarnished truth,
    to the tribes of Israel.

¹⁰“Israel’s rulers are crooks and thieves,
cheating the people of their land,
And I’m angry, good and angry.
Every inch of their bodies is going to feel my anger.

^11-12“Brutal Ephraim is himself brutalized—
    a taste of his own medicine!
He was so determined
    to do it his own worthless way.
Therefore I’m pus to Ephraim,
    dry rot in the house of Judah.

¹³“When Ephraim saw he was sick
    and Judah saw his pus-filled sores,
Ephraim went running to Assyria,
    went for help to the big king.
But he can’t heal you.
    He can’t cure your oozing sores.

^14-15“I’m a grizzly charging Ephraim,
    a grizzly with cubs charging Judah.
I’ll rip them to pieces—yes, I will!
    No one can stop me now.
I’ll drag them off.
    No one can help them.
Then I’ll go back to where I came from
    until they come to their senses.
When they finally hit rock bottom,
    maybe they’ll come looking for me.”

Gangs of Priests Assaulting Worshipers

6 ^1-3“Come on, let’s go back to God.
    He hurt us, but he’ll heal us.
He hit us hard,
    but he’ll put us right again.
In a couple of days we’ll feel better.
    By the third day he’ll have made us brand-new,
Alive and on our feet,
    fit to face him.
We’re ready to study God,
    eager for God-knowledge.
As sure as dawn breaks,
    so sure is his daily arrival.
He comes as rain comes,
    as spring rain refreshing the ground.”

* * *

^4-7“What am I to do with you, Ephraim?
    What do I make of you, Judah?
Your declarations of love last no longer
    than morning mist and predawn dew.
That’s why I use prophets to shake you to attention,
    why my words cut you to the quick:
To wake you up to my judgment
    blazing like light.
I’m after love that lasts, not more religion.
    I want you to know God, not go to more prayer meetings.
You broke the covenant—just like Adam!
    You broke faith with me—ungrateful wretches!

^8-9“Gilead has become Crime City—
    blood on the sidewalks, blood on the streets.
It used to be robbers who mugged pedestrians.
    Now it’s gangs of priests
Assaulting worshipers on their way to Shechem.
    Nothing is sacred to them.

¹⁰“I saw a shocking thing in the country of Israel:
Ephraim worshiping in a religious whorehouse,
and Israel in the mud right there with him.

¹¹“You’re as bad as the worst of them, Judah.
You’ve been sowing wild oats. Now it’s harvest time.”