Hosea 13 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
~725-722 BC, the last years of the northern kingdom under its final king, Hoshea
Location
The northern kingdom of Israel, with the tribe of Ephraim standing for the whole nation
Audience
Israelites in the north, days or years from national destruction
Situation
God reviews Ephraim's rise and collapse: once respected, then guilty through Baal worship, now making silver idols and kissing calf images. God says he will meet them like a bear robbed of her cubs, and asks where their king is who was supposed to save them.
Key Background
The demand for a king recalls Israel's founding decision to have a monarchy like the surrounding nations, and Hosea treats the whole institution as a request God granted in anger. Kissing an image was a normal act of homage in the ancient Near East, offered to a statue the way a subject kissed a ruler's hand. The four pictures of vanishing, morning mist, dew, chaff blown from the threshing floor, and smoke through a window slot, all come from ordinary village life and all describe something real that simply stops being there.
When spoke, there was — he carried weight among Israel. But then he Baal, and he
And now they on — worse and worse. They cast metal images from their silver, idols shaped by their own skill, all of it the work of craftsmen. They say of these things, "Let those who offer sacrifice kiss the
So they will be like the mist, like dew that vanishes early, like chaff swept from the floor, like smoke that drifts from a window.
But I am your God from the of — you have never known any God but me, and there is no besides me.
I you in the wilderness, in that and
When they found pasture, they were satisfied; once satisfied, their — and so they me.
So now I will be like a to them, like a lurking by the road.
I will attack them like a of cubs; I will the of their chest. I will devour them there like a lioness — like a wild beast ripping them apart.
It has you, Israel — that you are against me, against your
Where now is your to you in all your cities? And your rulers, of whom you said, "Give me a and officials"?
I you a in my anger, and I took him away in my fury.
Ephraim's guilt is up, his are stored away.
The of a in come over him — but he is a child without wisdom: when the time comes, he does not present himself at the of the
Should I them from the grip of the grave? Should I redeem them from death? Where are your plagues, Death? Where is your devastation, Grave? Compassion is from my
Even though he brothers, an will come — the of rising from the wilderness. His spring will dry up, his fountain will run dry. It will plunder treasury of every precious thing.
will guilt, because she has against God. They will fall by the sword; their infants will be dashed to pieces, their pregnant women ripped open.