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LXX Hosea

Septuagint

About this book
Chapter 14

1 Samaria shall be utterly destroyed: for she has resisted her God; they shall fall by the sword, and their sucklings shall be dashed against the ground, and their women with child ripped up. 2 Return, Israel, to the Lord your God; for you have fallen through your iniquities. 3 Take with you words, and turn to the Lord your God: speak to him, that you may not receive the reward of unrighteousness, but that you may receive good things: and we will render in return the fruit of our lips.⁠ 4 Assyria shall never save us; we will not mount on horseback; we will no longer say to the works of our hands, Our gods. He who is in you shall pity the orphan. 5 I will restore their dwellings, I will love them truly: for my fierce anger has turned away from them. 6 I will be as dew to Israel: he shall bloom as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. 7 His branches shall spread, and he shall be as a fruitful olive, and his smell shall be as the smell of Lebanon. 8 They shall return, and dwell under his shadow: they shall live and be satisfied with grain, and he shall flower as a vine: his memorial shall be to Ephraim as the wine of Lebanon. 9 What has Ephraim to do any more with idols? I have afflicted him, and I will strengthen him: I am as a leafy juniper tree. From me is your fruit found. 10 Who is wise, and will understand these things? or prudent, and will know them? for the ways of the Lord are straight, and the righteous shall walk in them: but the ungodly shall fall in them.

Texts in conversation

Compare LXX Hosea 14:3 and Hebrews 13:15

Septuagint · New Testament

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Summary

The Hebrew version of Hosea has Israel offer the bulls of their lips, but the Greek Septuagint translates it to the fruit of their lips. Hebrews echoes the Greek version, changing animal sacrifice into spoken praise that confesses God’s name.

Passages

LXX Hosea 14:3

Septuagint
2 Return, Israel, to the Lord your God; for you have fallen through your iniquities. 3 Take with you words, and turn to the Lord your God: speak to him, that you may not receive the reward of unrighteousness, but that you may receive good things: and we will render in return the fruit of our lips. 4 Assyria shall never save us; we will not mount on horseback; we will no longer say to the works of our hands, Our gods. He who is in you shall pity the orphan.
100–1 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Hosea

Hebrews 13:15

New Testament
14 For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. 15 Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, acknowledging his name. 16 And do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for God is pleased with such sacrifices.
80–90 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Hebrews

References

... And while the regulations in Leviticus refer to various leavened and unleavened cakes, Hebrews redefines the offering as the fruit of lips that confess the name of Jesus (καρπὸν χειλέων ὁμολογούντων τῷ ὀνόματι αὐτοῦ). The expression “fruit of lips” appears in Hosea 14:2 (Septuagint 14:3) where the people are given a liturgy for a prayer for forgiveness, including a promise to “repay” the fruit of their lips, that is, put their words into action by fulfilling their vows of repentance. In Hebrews, as in Hosea, sacrificial language is put to use in terms of speech. A similar phenomenon is encountered at Qumran, where the community (which had withdrawn from the temple) transferred the language of sacrifice to speech in honour of God. ...
Philip Church, Hebrews and the Temple: Attitudes to the Temple in Second Temple Judaism and in Hebrews, NovTSup 171 (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 366–367.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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LXX Hosea 14:3 and Hebrews 13:15

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