Hosea

¹ God indicts the whole population: "No one is faithful. No one loves. No one knows the first thing about God.

² sheer anarchy, one murder after another!

³ and everything in it is grief-stricken— animals in the fields and birds on the wing, even the fish in the sea are listless, lifeless.

⁴ No finger pointing! You, priest, are the one in the dock.

⁵ And then the prophets take over and stumble all night. Your mother is as bad as you.

⁶ because they don't know what's right or true. Because you've turned your back on knowledge, I've turned my back on you priests. Because you refuse to recognize the revelation of God, I'm no longer recognizing your children.

⁷ They traded in their glory for shame.

⁸ They can't wait for the latest in evil.

⁹ the priests from the people. I'm on my way to make them both pay and take the consequences of the bad lives they've lived.

¹⁰ have sex and get no satisfaction. They walked out on me, their God, for a life of rutting with whores.

¹¹ leave my people in a stupor.

¹² expect answers from a sturdy walking stick. Drunk on sex, they can't find their way home. They've replaced their God with their genitals.

¹³ make a picnic out of religion. Under the oaks and elms on the hills they stretch out and take it easy. Before you know it, your daughters are whores and the wives of your sons are sleeping around.

¹⁴ or the adulterous wives of your sons. It's the men who pick up the whores that I'm after, the men who worship at the holy whorehouses— a stupid people, ruined by whores!

¹⁵ but don't drag Judah down with you! Don't go to the sex shrine at Gilgal, don't go to that sin city Bethel, Don't go around saying 'God bless you' and not mean it, taking God's name in vain.

¹⁶ How can God lead him like a lamb to open pasture?

¹⁷ Let him go.

¹⁸ it's sex, sex, and more sex. Bold and sordid debauchery— how they love it!

¹⁹ Their sex-worship leaves them finally impotent.