Immerse: Prophets - Flipbook - Page 49
12:9–13:4
H osea
No one has caught me cheating!
My record is spotless!”
“But I am the Lord your God,
who rescued you from slavery in Egypt.
And I will make you live in tents again,
as you do each year at the Festival of Shelters.
I sent my prophets to warn you
with many visions and parables.”
But the people of Gilead are worthless
because of their idol worship.
And in Gilgal, too, they sacrifice bulls;
their altars are lined up like the heaps of stone
along the edges of a plowed field.
Jacob fled to the land of Aram,
and there he earned a wife by tending sheep.
Then by a prophet
the Lord brought Jacob’s descendants out of Egypt;
and by that prophet
they were protected.
But the people of Israel
have bitterly provoked the Lord,
so their Lord will now sentence them to death
in payment for their sins.
When the tribe of Ephraim spoke,
the people shook with fear,
for that tribe was important in Israel.
But the people of Ephraim sinned by worshiping Baal
and thus sealed their destruction.
Now they continue to sin by making silver idols,
images shaped skillfully with human hands.
“Sacrifice to these,” they cry,
“and kiss the calf idols!”
Therefore, they will disappear like the morning mist,
like dew in the morning sun,
like chaff blown by the wind,
like smoke from a chimney.
“I have been the Lord your God
ever since I brought you out of Egypt.
You must acknowledge no God but me,
for there is no other savior.
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