The word of the Lord which came to Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel.

So he took as his wife Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she gave birth to a son.

Take up the cause against your mother, take it up, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband; let her put away her loose ways from her face, and her false ways from between her breasts;

For fear that I may take away her robe from her, making her uncovered as in the day of her birth; making her like a waste place and a dry land, causing her death through need of water.

And I will give her vine-gardens from there, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope; and she will give her answer there as in the days when she was young, and as in the time when she came up out of the land of Egypt.

And I will take you as my bride for ever; truly, I will take you as my bride in righteousness and in right judging, in love and in mercies.

I will take you as my bride in good faith, and you will have knowledge of the Lord.

And I will put her as seed in the earth, and I will have mercy on her to whom no mercy was given; and I will say to those who were not my people, You are my people, and they will say, My God.

And the Lord said to me, Give your love again to a woman who has a lover and is false to her husband, even as the Lord has love for the children of Israel, though they are turned to other gods and are lovers of grape-cakes.

And I said to her, You are to be mine for a long space of time; you are not to be false to me, and no other man is to have you for his wife; and so will I be to you.

Give ear to the word of the Lord, O children of Israel; for the Lord has a cause against the people of this land, because there is no good faith in it, and no mercy and no knowledge of God in the land.

There is cursing and broken faith, violent death and attacks on property, men are untrue in married life, houses are broken into, and there is blood touching blood.

The sin of my people is like food to them; and their desire is for their wrongdoing.

My people get knowledge from their tree, and their rod gives them news; for a false spirit is the cause of their wandering, and they have been false to their God.

They make offerings on the tops of mountains, burning perfumes in high places, under trees of every sort, because their shade is good: and so your daughters are given up to loose ways and your brides are false to their husbands.

For Israel is uncontrolled, like a cow which may not be controlled; now will the Lord give them food like a lamb in a wide place.

Ephraim is joined to false gods; let him be.

I have knowledge of Ephraim, and Israel is not secret from me; for now, O Ephraim, you have been false to me, Israel has become unclean.

Their works will not let them come back to their God, for a false spirit is in them and they have no knowledge of the Lord.

And the pride of Israel gives an answer to his face; and Ephraim will have a fall through his sins, and the fall of Judah will be the same as theirs.

Ephraim will become a waste in the day of punishment; I have given knowledge among the tribes of Israel of what is certain.

Ephraim is troubled; he is crushed by his judges, because he took pleasure in walking after deceit.

When Ephraim saw his disease and Judah his wound, then Ephraim went to Assyria and sent to the great king; but he is not able to make you well or give you help for your wound.

For I will be to Ephraim as a lion, and as a young lion to the children of Judah; I, even I, will give him wounds and go away; I will take him away, and there will be no helper.

Come, let us go back to the Lord; for he has given us wounds and he will make us well; he has given blows and he will give help.

After two days he will give us life, and on the third day he will make us get up, and we will be living before him.

And let us have knowledge, let us go after the knowledge of the Lord; his going out is certain as the dawn, his decisions go out like the light; he will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth.

O Ephraim, what am I to do to you? O Judah, what am I to do to you? For your love is like a morning cloud, and like the dew which goes early away.

Because my desire is for mercy and not offerings; for the knowledge of God more than for burned offerings.

Gilead is a town of evil-doers, marked with blood.

In Israel I have seen a very evil thing; there false ways are seen in Ephraim, Israel is unclean;

They are all untrue; they are like a burning oven; the bread-maker does not make up the fire from the time when the paste is mixed till it is leavened.

For they have made their hearts ready like an oven, while they are waiting secretly; their wrath is sleeping all night; in the morning it is burning like a flaming fire.

Ephraim is mixed with the peoples; Ephraim is a cake not turned.

Men from other lands have made waste his strength, and he is not conscious of it; grey hairs have come on him here and there, and he has no knowledge of it.

And Ephraim is like a foolish dove, without wisdom; they send out their cry to Egypt, they go to Assyria.

They have gone to what is of no value; they are like a false bow; their captains will come to destruction by the sword, and their ruler by my wrath; for this, the land of Egypt will make sport of them.

Israel has given up what is good; his haters will go after him.

I will have nothing to do with your young ox, O Samaria; my wrath is burning against them; how long will it be before the children of Israel make themselves clean?

The workman made it, it is no god; the ox of Samaria will be broken into bits.

Israel has come to destruction; now they are among the nations like a cup in which there is no pleasure.

For they have gone up to Assyria like an ass going by himself; Ephraim has given money to get lovers.

Though I put my law in writing for him in ten thousand rules, they are to him as a strange thing.

The days of punishment, the days of reward are come; Israel will be put to shame; the prophet is foolish, the man who has the spirit is off his head, because of your great sin.

There is great hate against the watchman of Ephraim, the people of my God; as for the prophet, there is a net in all his ways, and hate in the house of his God.

They have gone deep in evil as in the days of Gibeah; he will keep in mind their wrongdoing, he will give them punishment for their sins.

I made discovery of Israel as of grapes in the waste land; I saw your fathers as the first-fruits of the fig-tree in her early fruit time; but they came to Baal-peor, and made themselves holy to the thing of shame, and became disgusting like that to which they gave their love.

As for Ephraim, their glory will go in flight like a bird: there will be no birth and no one with child and no giving of life.

As I have seen a beast whose young have been taken from her, so Ephraim will give birth to children only for them to be put to death.

All their evil-doing is in Gilgal; there I had hate for them; because of their evil-doing I will send them out of my house; they will no longer be dear to me; all their rulers are uncontrolled.

The rod has come on Ephraim, their root is dry, let them have no fruit; even though they give birth, I will put to death the dearest fruit of their bodies.

Israel is a branching vine, full of fruit; as his fruit is increased, so the number of his altars is increased; as the land is fair, so they have made fair pillars.

Their mind is taken away; now they will be made waste: he will have their altars broken down, he will give their pillars to destruction.

Now, truly, they will say, We have no king, we have no fear of the Lord; and the king, what is he able to do for us?

As for Samaria, her king is cut off, like mist on the water.

And the high places of Aven, the sin of Israel, will come to destruction; thorns and waste plants will come up on their altars; they will say to the mountains, Be a cover over us; and to the hills, Come down on us.

And Ephraim is a trained cow, taking pleasure in crushing the grain; but I have put a yoke on her fair neck; I will put a horseman on the back of Ephraim; Judah will be working the plough, Jacob will be turning up the earth.

Put in the seed of righteousness, get in your grain in mercy, let your unploughed earth be turned up: for it is time to make search for the Lord, till he comes and sends righteousness on you like rain.

So a great outcry will go up from among your people, and all your strong places will be broken, as Beth-arbel was broken by Shalman in the day of war, as the mother was broken on the rocks with her children.

I made them come after me with the cords of a man, with the bands of love; I was to them as one who took the yoke from off their mouths, putting meat before them.

How may I give you up, O Ephraim? how may I be your saviour, O Israel? how may I make you like Admah? how may I do to you as I did to Zeboim? My heart is turned in me, it is soft with pity.

Ephraim's food is the wind, and he goes after the east wind: deceit and destruction are increasing day by day; they make an agreement with Assyria, and take oil into Egypt.

Even the Lord, the God of armies; the Lord is his name.

As for Canaan, the scales of deceit are in his hands; he takes pleasure in twisted ways.

But I am the Lord your God from the land of Egypt; I will give you tents for your living-places again as in the days of the holy meeting.

My word came to the ears of the prophets and I gave them visions in great number, and by the mouths of the prophets I made use of comparisons.

In Gilead there is evil. They are quite without value; in Gilgal they make offerings of oxen; truly their altars are like masses of stones in the hollows of a ploughed field.

So they will be like the morning cloud, like the dew which goes early away, like the dust of the grain which the wind is driving out of the crushing-floor, like smoke going up from the fireplace.

But I am the Lord your God, from the land of Egypt; you have knowledge of no other God and there is no saviour but me.

So I will be like a lion to them; as a cruel beast I will keep watch by the road;

I will come face to face with them like a bear whose young ones have been taken from her, and their inmost hearts will be broken; there the dogs will make a meal of them; they will be wounded by the beasts of the field.

Where is your king, that he may be your saviour? and all your rulers, that they may take up your cause? of whom you said, Give me a king and rulers.

The wrongdoing of Ephraim is shut up; his sin is put away in secret.

The pains of a woman in childbirth will come on him: he is an unwise son, for at this time it is not right for him to keep his place when children come to birth.

I will give the price to make them free from the power of the underworld, I will be their saviour from death: O death! where are your pains? O underworld! where is your destruction? my eyes will have no pity.

Take with you words, and come back to the Lord; say to him, Let there be forgiveness for all wrongdoing, so that we may take what is good, and give in payment the fruit of our lips.

Assyria will not be our salvation; we will not go on horses; we will not again say to the work of our hands, You are our gods; for in you there is mercy for the child who has no father.

I will put right their errors; freely will my love be given to them, for my wrath is turned away from him.

I will be as the dew to Israel; he will put out flowers like a lily, and send out his roots like Lebanon.

His branches will be stretched out, he will be beautiful as the olive-tree and sweet-smelling as Lebanon.

As for Ephraim, what has he to do with false gods any longer? I have given an answer and I will keep watch over him; I am like a branching fir-tree, from me comes your fruit.

He who is wise will see these things; he who has good sense will have knowledge of them. For the ways of the Lord are straight, and the upright will go in them, but sinners will be falling in them.