(14:1) Samaria will be held guilty, because she rebelled against her God. They will fall by the sword, their infants will be dashed to the ground – their pregnant women will be ripped open.

I will attack them like a bear robbed of her cubs – I will rip open their chests. I will devour them there like a lion – like a wild animal would tear them apart.

Therefore they will disappear like the morning mist, like early morning dew that evaporates, like chaff that is blown away from a threshing floor, like smoke that disappears through an open window.

The labor pains of a woman will overtake him, but the baby will lack wisdom; when the time arrives, he will not come out of the womb!

Israel has rebelled like a stubborn heifer! Soon the Lord will put them out to pasture like a lamb in a broad field!

Jacob fled to the country of Aram, then Israel worked to acquire a wife; he tended sheep to pay for her.

When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, he said to him, “Go marry a prostitute who will bear illegitimate children conceived through prostitution, because the nation continually commits spiritual prostitution by turning away from the Lord.”

I will destroy her vines and fig trees, about which she said, “These are my wages for prostitution that my lovers gave to me!” I will turn her cultivated vines and fig trees into an uncultivated thicket, so that wild animals will devour them.

Therefore the land will mourn, and all its inhabitants will perish. The wild animals, the birds of the sky, and even the fish in the sea will perish.

“At that time I will make a covenant for them with the wild animals, the birds of the air, and the creatures that crawl on the ground. I will abolish the warrior’s bow and sword – that is, every weapon of warfare – from the land, and I will allow them to live securely.”