CinematicBible Songs
Listen NowSupport
ENESPT-BRFIL
ENESPT-BRFIL
Back to all lyrics
Artwork for I Will Be as the Dew

Hosea 12:1-14:9

I Will Be as the Dew

Lyrics · Hosea

I Will Be as the Dew

Hosea 12:1-14:9

LISTEN HERE
Lyrics

About this song

About this song

This song belongs to the Hosea collection. One recording is available to play here, with the complete lyrics below.

Bible book
Hosea
Collection
Hosea
Musical styles
World Music
[Movement I] Jacob held the heel, then held through the night, He wept at Bethel and learned how to wait. But Ephraim weighed with a crooked scale, Cloud in the morning, chaff on the floor, [Movement II] Called wealth an acquittal while mercy grew pale. Return with words, not horses or gold, No hand-shaped god and no empire to hold. Smoke through a window, then seen no more. [Movement III] Heal our backsliding; take guilt away, Let praise from our lips be the calves we now pay. I will be as dew; the lily will rise, Roots like Lebanon, branches under wide skies. [Bridge] From me is thy fruit; let the wise understand: The ways of the LORD are right in the land. [Coda] Cloud in the morning, chaff on the floor, Smoke through a window, then seen no more. From me is thy fruit; let the wise understand: The ways of the LORD are right in the land.

Named in this songJacobBethel

About the passage

Hosea 12: Jacob's descendants cannot live on wind and dishonest scales

Ephraim's foreign agreements are described as feeding on wind and chasing an east wind, while Judah is also brought into the Lord's controversy. Hosea reaches back to Jacob, but ancestry does not become a shield against accusation. The ancestor who grasped a heel, struggled, wept, and made supplication becomes a reminder that Israel's beginnings included dependence rather than effortless self-sufficiency. That challenge sharpens when a merchant with deceitful balances boasts of wealth and innocence. Financial gain cannot make crooked measures straight. The Lord answers with the memory of Egypt, repeated prophetic speech, and corrupted altars. The final section returns to Jacob as a fugitive who worked for a wife and kept sheep, then to Israel's preservation through a prophet. Family and nation both began in dependence, making Ephraim's present claim of self-made security ring false.

Study Hosea 12 in depth

Hosea 13: The forgotten giver and the power of the grave

Ephraim's former standing collapses into devotion to Baal and handmade calves, and the chapter answers that decline with images of things that disappear quickly: cloud, dew, chaff, and smoke. The Lord then recalls exclusive saving care from Egypt and provision in the wilderness. The crucial reversal occurs in prosperity. Full pasture leads to a lifted heart, and abundance becomes the setting of forgetfulness. Lion, leopard, bear, and wild beast therefore turn the place of feeding into a place of danger. Kingship is also exposed as unable to save. A difficult saying about ransom from death and the grave interrupts the judgment language, and the KJV presents it as a declaration of redemption even though other readings understand the wording as a refusal of rescue. The chapter closes by returning to drought, plunder, desolation, and the terrible civilian consequences of Samaria's rebellion.

Study Hosea 13 in depth

Hosea 14: The final return brings words instead of another calf

The Book of Hosea ends with a direct summons to return, and this time the text supplies the words of that return. The people are to ask for iniquity to be removed and gracious acceptance to be given, while explicitly renouncing Assyria, horses, and the work of their own hands as sources of salvation. The answer addresses the problem beneath the visible disasters: backsliding itself is healed, love is given freely, and anger is turned away. Hosea then reverses much of his earlier natural imagery. Dew no longer disappears but nourishes; dried roots become deep roots; failed harvests become grain, vine, olive, fragrance, shade, and fruit. The final exchange rejects idols and locates fruit in the Lord as its source. A closing wisdom saying gathers judgment and restoration together by distinguishing those who walk in the Lord's right ways from those who stumble in them.

Study Hosea 14 in depth