So I paid fifteen shekels of silver and about seven bushels of barley ¹  to purchase her.

So Hosea married ¹  Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim. Then she conceived and gave birth to a son for him.

So ¹  I will pounce on them like a lion; ²  like a leopard I will lurk by the path.

Just as lion cubs are born predators, ¹  so Ephraim will bear his sons for slaughter.

But Israel has rejected what is morally good; so an enemy will pursue him.

So what will you do on the festival day, on the festival days of the Lord?

Therefore, I will soon ¹  fence her in ²  with thorns; I will wall her in ³  so that ⁴  she cannot find her way. ⁵ 

My God will reject them, for they have not obeyed him; so they will be fugitives among the nations.

So will it happen to you, O Bethel, ¹  because of your great wickedness! When that day dawns, ²  the king of Israel will be destroyed. ³ 

For ¹  I will remove the names of the Baal idols ²  from your lips, ³  so that you will never again utter their names!” ⁴ 

He will restore ¹  us in a very short time; ²  he will heal us in a little while, ³  so that we may live in his presence.

But Ephraim bitterly ¹  provoked him to anger; so he will hold him accountable for the blood he has shed, ²  his Lord ³  will repay him for the contempt he has shown. ⁴ 

They sow the wind, and so they will reap the whirlwind! The stalk does not have any standing grain; it will not produce any flour. Even if it were to yield grain, foreigners would swallow it all up.

They turn to Baal; ¹  they are like an unreliable bow. Their leaders will fall by the sword because their prayers to Baal ²  have made me angry. So people will disdain them in the land of Egypt. ³ 

Plead earnestly ¹  with your ²  mother (for ³  she is not my wife, and I am not her husband), so that ⁴  she might put an end to her adulterous lifestyle, ⁵  and turn away from her sexually immoral behavior. ⁶ 

Otherwise, I will strip her naked, and expose her like she was when she was born. I will turn her land into a wilderness and make her country a parched land, so that I might kill ¹  her with thirst.

I will destroy her vines and fig trees, about which she said, “These are my wages for prostitution ¹  that my lovers gave to me!” I will turn her cultivated vines and fig trees ²  into an uncultivated thicket, so that wild animals ³  will devour them.

They sacrifice on the mountaintops, and burn offerings on the hills; they sacrifice ¹  under oak, poplar, and terebinth, because their shade is so pleasant. As a result, your daughters have become cult prostitutes, and your daughters-in-law commit adultery!

So let us acknowledge him! ¹  Let us seek ²  to acknowledge ³  the Lord! He will come to our rescue as certainly as the appearance of the dawn, as certainly as the winter rain comes, as certainly as the spring rain that waters the land.”

The company of priests is like a gang of robbers, lying in ambush to pounce on a victim. They commit murder on the road to Shechem; they have done heinous crimes!