True Repentance (Hosea: Part 6) (Hosea 6:1–7:16) - Pastor John Moore

⁴ What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?
    What shall I do with you, O Judah?
Your love is like a morning cloud,
    like the dew that goes early away.
⁵ Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets;
    I have slain them by the words of my mouth,
    and my judgment goes forth as the light.
⁶ For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
    the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

⁷ But like Adam they transgressed the covenant;
    there they dealt faithlessly with me.
⁸ Gilead is a city of evildoers,
    tracked with blood.
⁹ As robbers lie in wait for a man,
    so the priests band together;
they murder on the way to Shechem;
    they commit villainy.
¹⁰ In the house of Israel I have seen a horrible thing;
    Ephraim's whoredom is there; Israel is defiled.

¹¹ For you also, O Judah, a harvest is appointed.

When I restore the fortunes of my people,
7 when I would heal Israel,
    the iniquity of Ephraim is revealed,
    and the evil deeds of Samaria,
for they deal falsely;
    the thief breaks in,
    and the bandits raid outside.
² But they do not consider
    that I remember all their evil.
Now their deeds surround them;
    they are before my face.
³ By their evil they make the king glad,
    and the princes by their treachery.
⁴ They are all adulterers;
    they are like a heated oven
whose baker ceases to stir the fire,
    from the kneading of the dough
    until it is leavened.
⁵ On the day of our king, the princes
    became sick with the heat of wine;
    he stretched out his hand with mockers.
⁶ For with hearts like an oven they approach their intrigue;
    all night their anger smolders;
    in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.
⁷ All of them are hot as an oven,
    and they devour their rulers.
All their kings have fallen,
    and none of them calls upon me.

⁸ Ephraim mixes himself with the peoples;
    Ephraim is a cake not turned.
⁹ Strangers devour his strength,
    and he knows it not;
gray hairs are sprinkled upon him,
    and he knows it not.
¹⁰ The pride of Israel testifies to his face;
    yet they do not return to the Lord their God,
    nor seek him, for all this.

¹¹ Ephraim is like a dove,
    silly and without sense,
    calling to Egypt, going to Assyria.
¹² As they go, I will spread over them my net;
    I will bring them down like birds of the heavens;
    I will discipline them according to the report made to their congregation.
¹³ Woe to them, for they have strayed from me!
    Destruction to them, for they have rebelled against me!
I would redeem them,
    but they speak lies against me.

¹⁴ They do not cry to me from the heart,
    but they wail upon their beds;
for grain and wine they gash themselves;
    they rebel against me.
¹⁵ Although I trained and strengthened their arms,
    yet they devise evil against me.
¹⁶ They return, but not upward;
    they are like a treacherous bow;
their princes shall fall by the sword
    because of the insolence of their tongue.
This shall be their derision in the land of Egypt.