Hosea 3
EasyEnglish Bible
Hosea returns to his wife
3 Then the Lord said to me, ‘Go back to your wife and show that you love her. Do that, even though she loves another man and is not faithful to you. The Lord loves the Israelites in the same way. They turn away from him to worship other gods. They love to offer gifts of raisins to idols. But the Lord still loves them.’
2 So I paid 15 pieces of silver and 50 kilograms of grain to get my wife back. 3 Then I told her, ‘You must stay at home with me for many days. You must not live as a prostitute. You must not have sex with any other man. I will also be faithful to you.’ 4 In the same way, the Israelites will have to live for many days without a king or any other leader. They will not be able to make sacrifices. They will not have their pillars, their ephods or their idols to help them.[a] 5 After that time, the Israelites will turn back to the Lord their God. They will serve their king, a descendant of King David. In the future, they will obey the Lord with fear, and they will receive his good gifts.
Footnotes
- 3:4 An ephod was a small coat that the priests wore. It had pockets for special stones to show them what God wanted his people to do.
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