When they go, I will spread My net over them; I will bring them down like the birds of the sky. I will discipline them in accordance with the proclamation to their assembly.
Parallel translations
- WEB When they go, I will spread my net on them. I will bring them down like the birds of the sky. I will chastise them, as their congregation has heard.
- KJV When they shall go, I will spread my net upon them; I will bring them down as the fowls of the heaven; I will chastise them, as their congregation hath heard.
- BSB As they go, I will spread My net over them; I will bring them down like birds of the air. I will chastise them when I hear them flocking together.
- NKJV Wherever they go, I will spread My net on them; I will bring them down like birds of the air; I will chastise them According to what their congregation has heard.
- NLT But as they fly about, I will throw my net over them and bring them down like a bird from the sky. I will punish them for all the evil they do.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
As they flit to and fro, God will spread His net and bring them down like birds, disciplining them as warned.
Overview
The dove imagery turns to judgment: God Himself will trap the wandering nation as a fowler snares birds. Their efforts to escape into foreign alliances will only deliver them into His chastening hand. This sovereign pursuit shows that no one can flee from God, and that His discipline, though severe, aims to bring His people back.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 14
- Ezek 12:13I will also spread my net on him, and he will be taken in my snare. I will bring him to Babylon to the land of the Chaldeans; yet he will not see it, though he will die there.
- Deut 28:15–68But it shall come to pass, if you will not listen to Yahweh your God’s voice, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come on you, and overtake you.
- Deut 29:22–28The generation to come, your children who will rise up after you, and the foreigner who will come from a far land, will say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses with which Yahweh has made it sick;
- 2 Kgs 17:13–18Yet Yahweh testified to Israel, and to Judah, by every prophet, and every seer, saying, “Turn from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my servants the prophets.”
- Job 19:6know now that God has subverted me, and has surrounded me with his net.
- Jer 16:16“Behold, I will send for many fishermen,” says Yahweh, “and they shall fish them up; and afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks.
- Eccl 9:12For man also doesn’t know his time. As the fish that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare, even so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falls suddenly on them.
- Jer 44:4However I sent to you all my servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them, saying, “Oh, don’t do this abominable thing that I hate.”
- Rev 3:19As many as I love, I reprove and chasten. Be zealous therefore, and repent.
- Deut 31:16–29Yahweh said to Moses, “Behold, you shall sleep with your fathers. This people will rise up, and play the prostitute after the strange gods of the land, where they go to be among them, and will forsake me, and break my covenant which I have made with them.
- Ezek 17:20I will spread my net on him, and he shall be taken in my snare, and I will bring him to Babylon, and will enter into judgment with him there for his trespass that he has trespassed against me.
- Ezek 32:3Thus says the Lord Yahweh: I will spread out my net on you with a company of many peoples; and they shall bring you up in my net.
- Deut 32:15–43But Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked. You have grown fat. You have grown thick. You have become sleek. Then he abandoned God who made him, and rejected the Rock of his salvation.
- Lev 26:14–46“‘But if you will not listen to me, and will not do all these commandments;
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Christ at the center
God's relentless love for an unfaithful bride dramatizes the gospel: 'Out of Egypt I called my son' is fulfilled in Jesus, who redeems an adulterous people at his own cost.
How Hosea 7:12 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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