Lectionary Calendar
Monday, July 28th, 2025
the Week of Proper 12 / Ordinary 17
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Read the Bible

THE MESSAGE

Hosea 6:8

"Gilead has become Crime City— blood on the sidewalks, blood on the streets. It used to be robbers who mugged pedestrians. Now it's gangs of priests Assaulting worshipers on their way to Shechem. Nothing is sacred to them.

Bible Study Resources

Concordances:

- Nave's Topical Bible - Backsliders;   Gilead;   Sin;   Torrey's Topical Textbook - Murder;  

Dictionaries:

- American Tract Society Bible Dictionary - Gilead or Galeed;   Bridgeway Bible Dictionary - Hosea;   Jeroboam;   Holman Bible Dictionary - Gilead;   Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible - Untoward;   Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament - Will;   People's Dictionary of the Bible - Gilead;  

Encyclopedias:

- International Standard Bible Encyclopedia - Gilead (1);   Untoward;   The Jewish Encyclopedia - Gilead;  

Devotionals:

- Every Day Light - Devotion for March 28;  

Parallel Translations

Christian Standard Bible®
Gilead is a city of evildoers,tracked with bloody footprints.
Hebrew Names Version
Gil`ad is a city of those who work iniquity; It is stained with blood.
King James Version
Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity, and is polluted with blood.
English Standard Version
Gilead is a city of evildoers, tracked with blood.
New American Standard Bible
Gilead is a city of wrongdoers, Tracked with bloody footprints.
New Century Version
Gilead is a city of people who do evil; their footprints are bloody.
Amplified Bible
Gilead is a city of wrongdoers; It is tracked with bloody footprints.
Geneva Bible (1587)
Gilead is a citie of them that worke iniquitie, and is polluted with blood.
New American Standard Bible (1995)
Gilead is a city of wrongdoers, Tracked with bloody footprints.
Legacy Standard Bible
Gilead is a city of workers of iniquity,With a track of blood.
Berean Standard Bible
Gilead is a city of evildoers, tracked with footprints of blood.
Contemporary English Version
Everyone in Gilead is evil; your hands are stained with the blood of victims.
Complete Jewish Bible
Gil‘ad is a city of criminals, covered with bloody footprints;
Darby Translation
Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity; it is tracked with blood.
Easy-to-Read Version
Gilead is a city of people who do evil— people who have tricked and killed others.
George Lamsa Translation
Gilead is a city of those who work iniquity, and wallows in blood. Your strength is as that of a robber.
Good News Translation
Gilead is a city full of evil people and murderers.
Lexham English Bible
Gilead is a city of evil, a cunning city because of blood.
Literal Translation
Gilead is a city of those who work iniquity, slippery with blood marks.
American Standard Version
Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity; it is stained with blood.
Bible in Basic English
Gilead is a town of evil-doers, marked with blood.
JPS Old Testament (1917)
Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity, it is covered with footprints of blood.
King James Version (1611)
Gilead is a city of them that worke iniquitie; and is polluted with blood.
Bishop's Bible (1568)
Gilead is a citie of wicked doers, and [is] polluted with blood.
Brenton's Septuagint (LXX)
But they are as a man transgressing a covenant:
English Revised Version
Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity, it is stained with blood.
World English Bible
Gilead is a city of those who work iniquity; It is stained with blood.
Wycliffe Bible (1395)
Galaad the citee of hem that worchen idol, is supplauntid with blood; and
Update Bible Version
Gilead is a city of those that work iniquity; it is stained with blood.
Webster's Bible Translation
Gilead [is] a city of them that work iniquity, [and is] polluted with blood.
New English Translation
Gilead is a city full of evildoers; its streets are stained with bloody footprints!
New King James Version
Gilead is a city of evildoers And defiled with blood.
New Living Translation
"Gilead is a city of sinners, tracked with footprints of blood.
New Life Bible
Gilead is a city of wrong-doers, with blood in every footstep.
New Revised Standard
Gilead is a city of evildoers, tracked with blood.
J.B. Rotherham Emphasized Bible
Gilead, is a city of workers of iniquity, - tracked with blood.
Douay-Rheims Bible
Galaad is a city of workers of idols, supplanted with blood.
Revised Standard Version
Gilead is a city of evildoers, tracked with blood.
Young's Literal Translation
Gilead [is] a city of workers of iniquity, Slippery from blood.
Miles Coverdale Bible (1535)
Galaad is a cite of wicked doers, of malicious people and bloudshedders.

Contextual Overview

4"What am I to do with you, Ephraim? What do I make of you, Judah? Your declarations of love last no longer than morning mist and predawn dew. That's why I use prophets to shake you to attention, why my words cut you to the quick: To wake you up to my judgment blazing like light. I'm after love that lasts, not more religion. I want you to know God , not go to more prayer meetings. You broke the covenant—just like Adam! You broke faith with me—ungrateful wretches! 8"Gilead has become Crime City— blood on the sidewalks, blood on the streets. It used to be robbers who mugged pedestrians. Now it's gangs of priests Assaulting worshipers on their way to Shechem. Nothing is sacred to them. 10 "I saw a shocking thing in the country of Israel: Ephraim worshiping in a religious whorehouse, and Israel in the mud right there with him. 11 "You're as bad as the worst of them, Judah. You've been sowing wild oats. Now it's harvest time."

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

Gilead: Hosea 12:11, Joshua 21:38

polluted with blood: or, cunning for blood, Hosea 5:1, 2 Samuel 3:27, 2 Samuel 20:8, 1 Kings 2:5, Psalms 10:8, Psalms 59:2, Isaiah 59:6, Jeremiah 11:19, Micah 7:2, Matthew 26:15, Matthew 26:16, Acts 23:12-15, Acts 25:3

Reciprocal: Hosea 7:1 - the iniquity

Cross-References

Genesis 6:17
"I'm going to bring a flood on the Earth that will destroy everything alive under Heaven. Total destruction.
Psalms 145:20
God sticks by all who love him, but it's all over for those who don't.
Proverbs 12:2
A good person basks in the delight of God , and he wants nothing to do with devious schemers.
Jeremiah 31:2
This is the way God put it: "They found grace out in the desert, these people who survived the killing. Israel, out looking for a place to rest, met God out looking for them!" God told them, "I've never quit loving you and never will. Expect love, love, and more love! And so now I'll start over with you and build you up again, dear virgin Israel. You'll resume your singing, grabbing tambourines and joining the dance. You'll go back to your old work of planting vineyards on the Samaritan hillsides, And sit back and enjoy the fruit— oh, how you'll enjoy those harvests! The time's coming when watchmen will call out from the hilltops of Ephraim: ‘On your feet! Let's go to Zion, go to meet our God !'"
Romans 4:4
If you're a hard worker and do a good job, you deserve your pay; we don't call your wages a gift. But if you see that the job is too big for you, that it's something only God can do, and you trust him to do it—you could never do it for yourself no matter how hard and long you worked—well, that trusting-him-to-do-it is what gets you set right with God, by God. Sheer gift.
Romans 11:6
The Loyal Minority Does this mean, then, that God is so fed up with Israel that he'll have nothing more to do with them? Hardly. Remember that I, the one writing these things, am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham out of the tribe of Benjamin. You can't get much more Semitic than that! So we're not talking about repudiation. God has been too long involved with Israel, has too much invested, to simply wash his hands of them. Do you remember that time Elijah was agonizing over this same Israel and cried out in prayer? God, they murdered your prophets, They trashed your altars; I'm the only one left and now they're after me! And do you remember God's answer? I still have seven thousand who haven't quit, Seven thousand who are loyal to the finish. It's the same today. There's a fiercely loyal minority still—not many, perhaps, but probably more than you think. They're holding on, not because of what they think they're going to get out of it, but because they're convinced of God's grace and purpose in choosing them. If they were only thinking of their own immediate self-interest, they would have left long ago.
1 Corinthians 15:10
But because God was so gracious, so very generous, here I am. And I'm not about to let his grace go to waste. Haven't I worked hard trying to do more than any of the others? Even then, my work didn't amount to all that much. It was God giving me the work to do, God giving me the energy to do it. So whether you heard it from me or from those others, it's all the same: We spoke God's truth and you entrusted your lives.
Titus 2:11
God's readiness to give and forgive is now public. Salvation's available for everyone! We're being shown how to turn our backs on a godless, indulgent life, and how to take on a God-filled, God-honoring life. This new life is starting right now, and is whetting our appetites for the glorious day when our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, appears. He offered himself as a sacrifice to free us from a dark, rebellious life into this good, pure life, making us a people he can be proud of, energetic in goodness.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

Gilead [is] a city of them that work iniquity,.... The chief city in the land of Gilead, which lay beyond Jordan, inhabited by Gad and Reuben, and the half tribe of Manasseh; and so belonged to the ten tribes, whose sins are here particularly observed. It had its name from the country, or the country from that, or both from the mountain of the same name. It is thought to be Ramothgilead, a city of refuge, and put for all the cities of refuge in those parts, which were inhabited by priests and Levites; and who ought to have had knowledge of the laws, and instructed the people in them, and observed them themselves, and set a good example to others; but, instead of this, the whole course of their lives, was vicious; they made a trade of sinning, did nothing else but work iniquity; and this was general among them, the city or cities of them consisted of none else; and all manner of iniquity was committed by them, particularly idolatry; for so the words may be rendered, "a city of them that serve an idol" a; not only at Dan and Bethel, but in the cities of the priests, idols were set up and worshipped; this shows the state to be very corrupt:

[and is] polluted with blood; with the blood of murderers harboured there, who ought not to have been admitted; or with the blood of such who were delivered up to the avenger of blood, that ought to have been sheltered, and both for the sake of money; or with the blood of children, sacrificed to Moloch: the word used has the signification of supplanting, lying in wait, and so is understood of a private, secret, shedding of blood, in a deceitful and insidious way: hence some render it, "cunning for blood" b; to which the Targum seems to agree, calling it a city

"of them that secretly or deceitfully shed innocent blood.''

It has also the signification of the heel of a man's foot, and is by some rendered, "trodden by blood" c; that is, by bloody men: or "footed" or "heeled by blood" d; that is, such an abundance of it was shed, that a man could not set his foot or his heel any where but in blood.

a קרית פעלי און "civitas operantium idolum", V. L. b עקבה מדם "callida et astuta sanguine", so some in Vatablus; "callida sanguine", Castslio. c "Calcata a sanguine", Piscator. d "Vestigiata a sanguine", Capellus, Tarnovius; "vestigis sanguinolentis", Juuius & Tremellius.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity - If we regard “Gilead,” (as it elsewhere is,) as the country beyond Jordan, where the two tribes and a half dwelt, this will mean that the whole land was banded in one, as one city of evil-doers. It had an unity, but of evil. As the whole world has been pictured as divided between “the city of God” and the city of the devil, consisting respectively of the children of God and the children of the devil; so the whole of Gilead may be represented as one city, whose inhabitants had one occupation in common, to work evil. Some think that there was a city so called, although not mentioned elsewhere in Holy Scripture, near that Mount Gilead, dear to the memory of Israel, because God there protected their forefather Jacob. Some think that it was Ramoth in Gilead , which God appointed as “a city of refuge,” and which, consequently, became a city of Levites and priests Joshua 21:38.

Here, where God had preserved the life of their forefather, and, in him, had preserved them; here, where He had commanded the innocent shedder of blood to be saved; here, where he had appointed those to dwell, whom He had hallowed to Himself, all was turned to the exact contrary. It, which God had hallowed, was become “a city of workers of iniquity,” i. e., of people, whose habits and custom was to work iniquity. It, where God had appointed life to be preserved, was “polluted” or “tracked with blood.” Everywhere it was marked and stained with the bloody footsteps of those, who (as David said) “put” innocent “blood in their shoes which were on their feet” 1 Kings 2:5, staining their shoes with blood which they shed, so that, wherever they went, they left marks and signs of it.” “Tracked with blood” it was, through the sins of its inhabitants; “tracked with blood” it was again, when it first was taken captive 2 Kings 15:29, and “it, which had swum with the innocent blood of others, swam with the guilty blood of its own people.” It is a special sin, and especially avenged of God, when what God had hallowed, is made the scene of sin.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Hosea 6:8. Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity — In this place Jacob and Laban made their covenant, and set up a heap of stones, which was called Galeed, the heap of testimony; and most probably idolatry was set up here. Perhaps the very heap became the object of superstitious adoration.


 
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