Hosea 8

World English Bible 86 include this book

1 “Put the trumpet to your lips! Something like an eagle is over the LORD’s house, because they have broken my covenant and rebelled against my law.

2 They cry to me, ‘My God, we, Israel, acknowledge you!’

3 Israel has cast off that which is good. The enemy will pursue him.

4 They have set up kings, but not by me. They have made princes, and I didn’t approve. Of their silver and their gold they have made themselves idols, that they may be cut off.

5 Let Samaria throw out his calf idol! My anger burns against them! How long will it be until they are capable of purity?

6 For this is even from Israel! The workman made it, and it is no God; indeed, the calf of Samaria shall be broken in pieces.

7 For they sow the wind, and they will reap the whirlwind. He has no standing grain. The stalk will yield no head. If it does yield, strangers will swallow it up.

8 Israel is swallowed up. Now they are among the nations like a worthless thing.

9 For they have gone up to Assyria, like a wild donkey wandering alone. Ephraim has hired lovers for himself.

10 But although they sold themselves among the nations, I will now gather them; and they begin to waste away because of the oppression of the king of mighty ones.

11 Because Ephraim has multiplied altars for sinning, they became for him altars for sinning.

12 I wrote for him the many things of my law, but they were regarded as a strange thing.

13 As for the sacrifices of my offerings, they sacrifice meat and eat it, but the LORD doesn’t accept them. Now he will remember their iniquity, and punish their sins. They will return to Egypt.

14 For Israel has forgotten his Maker and built palaces; and Judah has multiplied fortified cities; but I will send a fire on his cities, and it will devour its fortresses.”

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1 place named in this chapter.

Where this was written

Samaria attested Hosea prophesied to the northern kingdom.

When this was written

The traditions broadly agree on this one.

Broad agreement: 755 BC–715 BC Hosea
Dated by the kings named in the opening verse.

Elsewhere in the world

Events overlapping the period this book is dated to (755 BC–715 BC).

1200 BC–400 BC Olmec civilisation Mesoamerica
The earliest major Mesoamerican civilisation, known for colossal stone heads and an early calendar.
1200 BC–600 BC Zoroaster teaches in Persia Persia
Founder of Zoroastrianism, whose dating is disputed by as much as six centuries. His teaching on a cosmic struggle between good and evil later touched Jewish and Christian thought.
1070 BC–350 AD The kingdom of Kush Africa
A Nubian power on the upper Nile that ruled Egypt itself as its twenty-fifth dynasty.
753 BC Traditional founding of Rome Rome
The legendary date of Rome's founding, later used as the anchor of the Roman calendar.
750 BC–650 BC Homeric epics take written form Greece
The Iliad and Odyssey were fixed in writing after generations of oral transmission.
745 BC–609 BC Neo-Assyrian empire at its height Mesopotamia
Assyria dominated the Near East, deporting conquered populations as policy, including the northern kingdom of Israel.
722 BC Fall of Samaria Levant
The Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom of Israel and the deportation of much of its population.

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