Hosea

¹ 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,

² I'm going to punish the lot of you.

³ Yes, Israel, I see right through you! Ephraim, you've played your sex-and-religion games long enough. All Israel is thoroughly polluted.

⁴ 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 they're a public disgrace, The lot of them—Israel, Ephraim, Judah— lurching and weaving down their guilty streets.

⁶ and go off looking for God once again, They'll find it's too late. I, God, will be long gone.

⁷ filling the country with their bastard offspring. A plague of locusts will devastate their violated land.

⁸ the bugle in Ramah! Signal the invasion of Sin City! Scare the daylights out of Benjamin!

⁹ a lifeless moonscape. I'm telling it straight, the unvarnished truth, to the tribes of Israel.

¹⁰ 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 a taste of his own medicine! He was so determined to do it his own worthless way.

¹² dry rot in the house of Judah.

¹³ 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 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.

¹⁵ until they come to their senses. When they finally hit rock bottom, maybe they'll come looking for me."