Select: First Reading Second Reading Bible Background
First Reading: Hosea Chapter 2 and 3 and 4Hosea 2
2:1 "Say of your brothers, 'My people,' and of your sisters, 'My loved
one.'
2 "Rebuke your mother, rebuke her, for she is not my wife, and I am not
her husband. Let her remove the adulterous look from her face and the unfaithfulness
from between her breasts. 3 Otherwise I will strip her naked and make her as
bare as on the day she was born; I will make her like a desert, turn her into
a parched land, and slay her with thirst. 4 I will not show my love to her children,
because they are the children of adultery. 5 Their mother has been unfaithful
and has conceived them in disgrace. She said, 'I will go after my lovers, who
give me my food and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.' 6
Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes; I will wall her in so that
she cannot find her way. 7 She will chase after her lovers but not catch them;
she will look for them but not find them. Then she will say, 'I will go back
to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now.' 8 She has not
acknowledged that I was the one who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil,
who lavished on her the silver and gold- which they used for Baal.
9 "Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens, and my new wine
when it is ready. I will take back my wool and my linen, intended to cover her
nakedness. 10 So now I will expose her lewdness before the eyes of her lovers;
no one will take her out of my hands. 11 I will stop all her celebrations: her
yearly festivals, her New Moons, her Sabbath days-all her appointed feasts.
12 I will ruin her vines and her fig trees, which she said were her pay from
her lovers; I will make them a thicket, and wild animals will devour them. 13
I will punish her for the days she burned incense to the Baals; she decked herself
with rings and jewelry, and went after her lovers, but me she forgot,"
declares the LORD.
14 "Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert
and speak tenderly to her. 15 There I will give her back her vineyards, and
will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will sing as in the
days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt.
16 "In that day," declares the LORD, "you will call me 'my husband';
you will no longer call me 'my master.' 17 I will remove the names of the Baals
from her lips; no longer will their names be invoked. 18 In that day I will
make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air
and the creatures that move along the ground. Bow and sword and battle I will
abolish from the land, so that all may lie down in safety. 19 I will betroth
you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love
and compassion. 20 I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge
the LORD.
21 "In that day I will respond," declares the LORD- "I will respond
to the skies, and they will respond to the earth; 22 and the earth will respond
to the grain, the new wine and oil, and they will respond to Jezreel. 23 I will
plant her for myself in the land; I will show my love to the one I called 'Not
my loved one.' I will say to those called 'Not my people,' 'You are my people';
and they will say, 'You are my God.'"
Hosea 3
3:1 The LORD said to me, "Go, show your love to your wife again, though
she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the
Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes."
2 So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek
of barley. 3 Then I told her, "You are to live with me many days; you must
not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will live with you."
4 For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice
or sacred stones, without ephod or idol. 5 Afterward the Israelites will return
and seek the LORD their God and David their king. They will come trembling to
the LORD and to his blessings in the last days.
Hosea 4
4:1
Hear the word of the LORD, you Israelites, because the LORD has a charge to
bring against you who live in the land: "There is no faithfulness, no love,
no acknowledgment of God in the land. 2 There is only cursing, lying and murder,
stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.
3 Because of this the land mourns, and all who live in it waste away; the beasts
of the field and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea are dying.
4 "But let no man bring a charge, let no man accuse another, for your people
are like those who bring charges against a priest. 5 You stumble day and night,
and the prophets stumble with you. So I will destroy your mother- 6 my people
are destroyed from lack of knowledge.
"Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests;
because you have ignored the law of your God, I also will ignore your children.
7 The more the priests increased,the more they sinned against me; they exchanged
their Glory for something disgraceful. 8 They feed on the sins of my people
and relish their wickedness. 9 And it will be: Like people, like priests. I
will punish both of them for their ways and repay them for their deeds.
10 "They will eat but not have enough; they will engage in prostitution
but not increase, because they have deserted the LORD to give themselves 11
to prostitution, to old wine and new, which take away the understanding 12 of
my people. They consult a wooden idol and are answered by a stick of wood. A
spirit of prostitution leads them astray; they are unfaithful to their God.
13 They sacrifice on the mountaintops and burn offerings on the hills, under
oak, poplar and terebinth, where the shade is pleasant. Therefore your daughters
turn to prostitution and your daughters-in-law to adultery.
14 "I will not punish your daughters when they turn to prostitution, nor
your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery, because the men themselves
consort with harlots and sacrifice with shrine prostitutes- a people without
understanding will come to ruin!
15 "Though you commit adultery, O Israel, let not Judah become guilty.
"Do not go to Gilgal; do not go up to Beth Aven. And do not swear, 'As
surely as the LORD lives!' 16 The Israelites are stubborn, like a stubborn heifer.
How then can the LORD pasture them like lambs in a meadow? 17 Ephraim is joined
to idols; leave him alone! 18 Even when their drinks are gone, they continue
their prostitution; their rulers dearly love shameful ways. 19 A whirlwind will
sweep them away, and their sacrifices will bring them shame.
Second Reading: 2 Timothy Chapter 3
2 Timothy 3
3:1 But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People
will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient
to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous,
without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited,
lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God- 5 having a form of godliness but
denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.
6 They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed
women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires,
7 always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. 8 Just as Jannes
and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these men oppose the truth-men of depraved
minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. 9 But they will
not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear
to everyone.
10 You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith,
patience, love, endurance, 11 persecutions, sufferings-what kinds of things
happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet
the Lord rescued me from all of them. 12 In fact, everyone who wants to live
a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, 13 while evil men and impostors
will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. 14 But as for you,
continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you
know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known
the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith
in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching,
rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God
may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
BOOKS OF THE BIBLE
HOSEA
Part 2 of 2
The book of Hosea can be divided into three main parts:
Select: First Reading Second Reading Bible Background