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Hosea 4:13-15
New Catholic Bible
Hosea 4:13-15
New Catholic Bible
13 They offer sacrifice on the mountaintops
and burn incense on the hills,
beneath oak and poplar and terebinth
because the shade they afford is pleasant.
14 I shall not punish your daughters for becoming prostitutes
or your daughters-in-law for committing adultery.
For your men themselves consort with harlots
and offer sacrifice with temple prostitutes;
a people thus devoid of understanding is doomed.
15 Though you, O Israel, play the whore,
do not allow Judah to incur such guilt.
Do not come to Gilgal
or go up to Beth-aven,
and do not swear, “As the Lord lives!”[a]
Footnotes
- Hosea 4:15 A scribe from the land of Judah inserted verse 15 at this point in order to put his fellow citizens, likewise, on guard. Gilgal was in fact a place of worship near Jericho (see 1 Sam 11:15), where sacrifice was undoubtedly still being offered. Beth-aven (“House of wickedness”) is a sarcastic deformation of Bethel (“House of God”), indicating that the worship offered at this sanctuary was corrupt. In the eyes of the editor, who writes after Josiah’s reform of 622 B.C., all the high places apart from Jerusalem were already corrupt. In fact, Hosea is addressing Ephraim, that is, the principal tribe of the northern kingdom, and therefore the entire kingdom.
