Hosea 8

Israel Reaps the Whirlwind

¹Put the trumpet to your mouth![#8:1 Lit palate]

Like an eagle the enemy comes against the house of Yahweh

Because they have trespassed against My covenant

And transgressed against My law.

²They cry out to Me,

“My God, we of Israel know You!”

³Israel has rejected the good;

The enemy will pursue him.

⁴They have set up kings, but not by Me;

They have appointed princes, but I did not know it .

With their silver and gold they have made idols for themselves,

That they might be cut off.

⁵He has rejected your calf, O Samaria, saying ,[#8:5 Or Your calf has rejected you]

“My anger burns against them!”

How long will they be incapable of innocence?

⁶For from Israel is even this!

A craftsman made it, so it is not God;

Surely the calf of Samaria will be smashed to splinters.

⁷For they sow the wind,

And they reap the whirlwind.

The standing grain has no growth;

It makes no flour.

Should it make anything , strangers would swallow it up.

⁸¶Israel is swallowed up;

They are now among the nations

Like a vessel in which no one delights.

⁹For they have gone up to Assyria

Like a wild donkey all alone;

Ephraim has hired lovers.

¹⁰Even though they hire allies among the nations,

Now I will gather them up;

And they will begin to diminish

Because of the burden of the king of princes.

¹¹¶Since Ephraim has multiplied altars for sin,

They have become altars of sinning for him.

¹²Though I wrote for him ten thousand precepts of My law,

They are counted as a strange thing.

¹³As for My sacrificial gifts,

They sacrifice the flesh and eat it ,

But Yahweh has not accepted them.

Now He will remember their iniquity

And punish them for their sins;

They will return to Egypt.

¹⁴So Israel has forgotten his Maker and built palaces;

And Judah has multiplied fortified cities,

But I will send a fire on its cities that it may consume its palatial dwellings.