The conjunction Therefore introduces what may be considered the result of the crimes, or else the judgment that prescribes the punishment. The three main verbs that follow refer to an incomplete event, usually translated with present or future tense. Most English versions use the present tense, except Good News Translation and NET Bible, which use the future tense. These verbs show how things gradually become worse and finally end in death: mourns, languish, and are taken away.

The land mourns is a poetic picture of the land as if it were mourning the death of a loved one. If this image is not understood, it may be better translated “the land will wither” or “the land will dry up” (Good News Translation). The Hebrew verb for mourns can also mean “wither,” which fits well in this context of a drought. The land is not yet dead but is drying up. Moreover, the verb “wither” provides a beautiful contrast with the crimes that “flourish” in the previous verse.

And all who dwell in it languish: All who dwell in it may refer to “the inhabitants of the land” (4.1), but the Hebrew text here also seems to include all other living creatures, as is confirmed in the following lines of this verse. The Hebrew verb for languish means “grow weak,” and it implies that death is near. Good News Translation says “will die,” but it may be better to retain the three climactic stages referred to in the three main Hebrew verbs of this verse by rendering them “wither,” “weaken,” and “die.” Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch relates the weakening to the drought, saying “thirst away,” which means to die of thirst.

And also the beasts of the field, and the birds of the air; and even the fish of the sea are taken away: Beasts of the field is a Hebrew expression meaning “animals” (Good News Translation), but more specifically “wild animals” (New Living Translation, NET Bible). Birds of the air can be rendered simply “birds” (Good News Translation). For both these expressions, see 2.18. The Hebrew expression for fish of the sea does not refer only to fish living in large bodies of salt water, but to any “fish” (Good News Translation). It therefore includes those fish that will die when the lakes and streams dry up from the drought. Are taken away resembles the Hebrew euphemism for dying, “to be gathered to one’s people” (as in Gen 35.29), so it may be rendered “die” (Good News Translation). For these three lines Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch (1982) has “people as well as animals, even the fish come to an end.”

A translation model for this verse is:

• Therefore the land withers,
and all that lives in it wastes away.
The wild animals, the birds,
and even the fish are dying.

Quoted with permission from Dorn, Louis & van Steenbergen, Gerrit. A Handbook on Hosea. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2020. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .