Hosea, 6

¹ “Come, YOU people, and do let us return to Jehovah, for he himself has torn in pieces but he will heal us. He kept striking, but he will bind us up.

² He will make us alive after two days. On the third day he will make us get up, and we shall live before him.

³ And we will know, we will pursue to know Jehovah. Like dawn, his going forth is firmly established. And he will come in like a pouring rain to us; like a spring rain that saturates [the] earth.”

⁴ “What shall I do to you, O Eʹphra·im? What shall I do to you, O Judah, when the loving-kindness^*1 of YOU people is like the morning clouds and like the dew that early goes away?

⁵ That is why I shall have to hew [them] by the prophets; I shall have to kill them by the sayings of my mouth. And the judgments upon you will be as the light that goes forth.

⁶ For in loving-kindness I have taken delight, and not in sacrifice; and in the knowledge of God^*1 rather than in whole burnt offerings.

⁷ But they themselves, like earthling man,^*1 have overstepped [the] covenant. There is where they have dealt treacherously with me.

⁸ Gilʹe·ad is a town of practicers of what is harmful; their footprints are blood.

⁹ And as in the lying in wait for a man,^*1 the association of priests are marauding bands. By the wayside they commit murder at Sheʹchem, because they have carried on nothing but loose conduct.

¹⁰ In the house of Israel I have seen a horrible thing. There there is fornication on the part of Eʹphra·im. Israel has defiled itself.

¹¹ Furthermore, O Judah, a harvest has been fixed for you, when I gather back the captive ones of my people.”