I have seen you commit adultery and squeal with delight. I have seen you act like a shameless prostitute on the hills and in the fields. How horrible it will be for you, Jerusalem! Will you ever be clean?”
I will repay you for your sins and for the sins of your ancestors,” says the Lord. They burnt incense on the mountains and slandered me on the hills, so I will be the first to pay them back in full.
“What right do these people I love have to be in my house when they do so many devious things? Can the meat from their sacrifices turn disaster away from them? They rejoice when they do evil.”
When Josiah was king, the Lord asked me, “Did you see what unfaithful Israel did? She went up every high mountain and under every large tree, and she acted like a prostitute there.
He spread the scroll in front of me. There was writing on the front and back. There were funeral songs, songs of mourning, and horrible things written on it.
I brought them to the land that I promised to give them. When they saw any high hill or any leafy tree, they made sacrifices and brought offerings there to make me angry. There they offered their sacrifices and poured out their wine offerings.
“ ‘This is what the Almighty Lord says: How horrible it will be for that city of murderers, for that tarnished pot. Its tarnish will not come off. Empty the meat out of it piece by piece without choosing any particular piece.
Then you will know that I am the Lord. “ ‘Those who are killed will lie beside the idols around their altars. They will lie on every high hill, on all the mountaintops, and under every large tree and every leafy oak. These are the places where they made offerings to their disgusting idols.
When the Lord first spoke to Hosea, the Lord told him, “Marry a prostitute and have children with that prostitute. The people in this land have acted like prostitutes and abandoned the Lord.”
“How horrible it will be for you, Chorazin! How horrible it will be for you, Bethsaida! If the miracles worked in you had been worked in Tyre and Sidon, they would have changed the way they thought and acted long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
I’m afraid that when I come to you again, my God may humble me. I may have to grieve over many who formerly led sinful lives and have not changed the way they think and act about the perversion, sexual sins, and promiscuity in which they have been involved.
Since we have these promises, dear friends, we need to cleanse ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit and live a holy life in the fear of God.
You unfaithful people! Don’t you know that love for this ⌞evil⌟ world is hatred toward God? Whoever wants to be a friend of this world is an enemy of God.
I saw an eagle flying overhead, and I heard it say in a loud voice, “Catastrophe, catastrophe, catastrophe for those living on earth, because of the remaining trumpet blasts which the three angels are about to blow.”