Hosea 9 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
~730-722 BC, on the edge of the Assyrian conquest and deportation of Israel
Location
Israel's harvest festivals and threshing floors, with exile to Assyria and Egypt in view
Audience
Israelites in the north celebrating the grain and grape harvest
Situation
Hosea interrupts a harvest celebration to say the festivals are over: the crops will fail, the people will eat unclean food in exile, and there will be no more offerings. He recalls Israel's old sin at Baal Peor and announces that even childbirth will be cut off.
Key Background
The setting is the autumn ingathering festival, the year's happiest week, when families camped at the threshing floor and shrines filled with wine and singing. Eating in a foreign land counted as unclean because Israelite food rules and offering practice were tied to the land itself, so exile meant a life religiously off balance as well as displaced. Baal Peor refers to an incident during the wilderness journey when Israelites joined Moabite worship, and Hosea uses it as the moment the nation's pattern of unfaithfulness began.
Don't celebrate, Israel — stop partying like the other nations. You've been to your God. You loved the fee on every where grain was harvested.
The threshing floor and vat will not sustain them; the will betray her hopes.
They will not stay in land. Ephraim will go back to Egypt, and in Assyria they will eat food that is
They will not pour out to Yahweh; none of their sacrifices will satisfy him. Their will be like — everyone who eats it becomes contaminated. Their food will only fill their stomachs; it will never enter Yahweh's house.
What will you do on the day of the festival, on the day of Yahweh's feast?
Look — even if they escape the destruction, Egypt will gather them up, will bury them. Their precious silver treasures? Nettles will inherit those. Thorns will overrun their tents.
The days of have arrived. The days of payback are here. Let Israel know this! The prophet is called a fool, the is called insane — because your is so deep and your hostility so intense.
The prophet is a over Ephraim, standing with my God — yet traps are set on all his paths, and hostility waits inside God's own house.
They have sunk deep into depravity, just like the days of Gibeah. God will remember their corruption; he will make them pay for their
I found Israel like in the desert; I saw your ancestors like the first fruit on a young fig tree. But then they came to Baal-Peor and gave themselves to that thing, and they became as revolting as the they loved.
Ephraim's will fly away like a bird — no birth, no pregnancy, no conception.
Even if they do raise children, I will strip every one away before they grow up. What waits for them when I turn away!
Ephraim — I can see it now, planted in a meadow like Tyre. But Ephraim will lead their own children out to the slaughter.
Give them — Yahweh, what will you give them? Give them that miscarry and breasts that dry up.
All their wickedness began at Gilgal; that is where I started to despise them. Because of the evil they've done, I will drive them out of my house. I will not love them anymore. All their leaders are
Ephraim is down — their root has dried up; they will bear no fruit. Even if they do give birth, I will kill the precious children of their wombs.
My God will them because they have not listened to him, and they will become among the nations.