Study Desk

THEN the LORD said to me, Go again, love a woman who is fond of doing evil things and an adulteress, as the LORD loves the children of Israel, though they have turned and have gone after other gods, and love raisin cakes.

For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without a king and without a ruler and without a sacrifice and without an altar, and without the one who wears an ephod and burns incense.

Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the LORD their God and David their king; and they shall know the LORD and his goodness in the latter days.

HEAR the word of the LORD, O children of Israel; for the LORD has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no justice or mercy or knowledge of God in the land;

My people are silent for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you from the priesthood; seeing you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your children.

They have dealt falsely with the LORD, for they have begotten alien children.

Though they bring up their children, yet I will bereave them, that there shall not be a man left; yea, woe to them, for I will take vengeance upon them!

Ephraims fate shall be like that of Tyre, as you have seen, though planted in a pleasant place with buildings; likewise Ephraim shall bring out his children to the slaughter.

Ephraim is smitten, their root is dried up, they shall bear no fruit: yea, though they bear children, I will cause them to die, even those who are tenderly beloved.

O Israel, you have sinned from the days of Ramtha; there they shall remain, and the battle in Ramtha against the children of iniquity shall not overtake them.

Therefore destruction shall come upon your people, and all your provinces shall be despoiled as plunder is divided when peace is concluded, even from Beth-el as far as the northern border; in the day of the battle the mother was dashed in pieces upon her children.

Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation.

Be glad then, O children of Zion, and rejoice in the LORD your God; for he has given you food of righteousness, and he will cause to come down for you the rain, the early and the latter rain, as before.

And the children of Judah and the children of Jerusalem you have sold to the Greeks, that you might remove them far from their own border.

And I will deliver your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off; for the LORD had spoken it.

The LORD also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake; but the LORD will have pity upon his people, and will strengthen the children of Israel.

Egypt shall be a desolation, and Edom shall be a desolate wilderness, for the violence against the children of Judah, because they have shed innocent blood in their land.

And I raised up some of your sons for prophets, and some of your young men for Nazarites. Is it not even thus, O you children of Israel? says the LORD.

HEAR this word that the LORD has spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying,

Thus says the LORD: As the shepherd takes out of the mouth of the lion two legs or a piece of an ear, so shall the children of Israel be delivered who dwell in Samaria, along with the people who dwell in Damascus, by a staff that strikes suddenly.