Hosea.
Hosea 2.
6 “So look: I’m putting a wall of briars in her way.
I’m installing a levee. She won’t find a path through it.
7 She’ll pursue her lovers; she won’t catch up with them.
She’ll seek them; she won’t find them.
She’ll say, ‘I’ll go return to my man.
The past was better for me than the present.’”
16 The LORD reveals: “That day will come when you call me ‘my husband’
and not call me ‘my Baal’ anymore.
17 I pluck the Baals’ names from your mother’s mouth.
Don’t recognize me by that name anymore.”
Hosea 4.
16 “Israel’s like a stubborn cow.
Now, should I the LORD pastor her like a lamb in a valley?”
Hosea 10.
1 Israel’s a premium vine. Its fruit is just like it—it’s abundant fruit.
It has many good altars in the land. Good watchtowers.
2 Nowadays its minds are full of themselves. They’re guilty.
God breaks their altars’ necks. He lays the watchtowers waste.
3 For now they say, “We’ve no king. We don’t respect the LORD. What would a king do for us?
4 They speak words, swear empty oaths, cut covenants. They sprout judgment like weeds in a field’s furrows.
5 For the cows of Beth Aven, they fear their neighbor Samaria, as they mourn for it and its people,
and its priests rejoice over it, over the glory which was removed from it.
6 As for its people, they’re carried to Assyria as an offering to Assyria’s king.
Ephraim is taken. Israel is ashamed of its counsel. 7 Samaria’s king is ruined like a stick left in the water.
8 Aven’s high worship sites—Israel’s sins—are destroyed. Thorns and thistles grow on their altars.
They say to the mountains, “Hide us,” and to the hills, “Fall on us.”