Hosea 5 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
~735-732 BC, around the war in which Israel and Syria attacked Judah and Assyria intervened
Location
Israel and Judah, with named towns along the border between them, including Mizpah, Tabor, Gibeah, and Ramah
Audience
Priests, the royal house, and the people of both Israelite kingdoms
Situation
God addresses priests, king, and people together and says their deeds will not let them return to him. Both Israel and Judah are warned, and God pictures himself withdrawing until they admit their guilt and search for him.
Key Background
The border towns listed sat on the frontier between the two Israelite kingdoms and became flashpoints during the conflict historians call the Syro-Ephraimite war, when Israel and Damascus tried to force Judah into an anti-Assyrian alliance. Ephraim, used here for the northern kingdom as a whole, was its largest tribe. The image of God as a moth and as rot describes slow ruin from the inside rather than a sudden blow, which fits a kingdom losing territory and kings by degrees.
Hear this, you priests. Pay attention, house of Israel. Listen closely, royal family — because this is aimed at you. You became a at Mizpah, a net stretched out over Tabor.
The have gone deep into slaughter, but I will every one of them.
I know through and through, and Israel is not hidden from me. Because right now, you have given yourself to — Israel has made itself filthy.
Their actions will not let them return to their God. A of lives inside them, and they do not Yahweh.
Israel's testifies right to its face. Israel and Ephraim will stumble under the weight of their failures, and Judah will stumble alongside them.
They will go with their and herds to seek Yahweh, but they will not find him. He has from them.
They have been to Yahweh; they have fathered that are not his. Now the will devour them along with everything they have.
Blow the in Gibeah, the trumpet in Ramah! Sound the battle cry in — look behind you, Benjamin!
Ephraim will become a wasteland on the day of reckoning. Among the tribes of Israel I am making known what is certain.
The leaders of Judah have become like those who stones. I will pour out my on them like a flood of water.
Ephraim is justice is shattered, because he was determined to chase after what is
So I am like a to Ephraim, like to the house of Judah.
When Ephraim saw how he was, and Judah saw his wound, Ephraim went to Assyria and sent to the for help. But he cannot heal you, and he cannot close your wound.
Because I will be like a to Ephraim, like a to the house of Judah. I — I myself — will tear them apart and leave. I will carry them off, and no one will rescue them.
I will go back to my place until they their guilt and for my face. In their desperation, they will for me at