Hosea 9–10

Israel’s Punishment

9Israel, do not rejoice;

don’t shout for joy as the other nations do.

You have been like a prostitute against your God.

You love the pay of prostitutes on every threshing floor.

²But the threshing floor and the winepress will not feed the people,

and there won’t be enough new wine.

³The people will not stay in the Lord’s land.

Israel will return to being captives as they were in Egypt,

and in Assyria they will eat food that they are not allowed to eat.

⁴The Israelites will not give offerings of wine to the Lord;

they will not give him sacrifices.

Their sacrifices will be like food that is eaten at a funeral;

it is unclean, and everyone who eats it becomes unclean.

Their food will only satisfy their hunger;

they cannot sacrifice it in the Temple.

⁵What will you do then on the day of feasts

and on the day of the Lord’s festival?

⁶Even if the people are not destroyed,

Egypt will capture them;

Memphis ⁿ will bury them.

Weeds will grow over their silver treasures,

and thorns will drive them out of their tents.

⁷The time of punishment has come,

the time to pay for sins.

Let Israel know this:

You think the prophet is a fool,

and you say the spiritual person is crazy.

You have sinned very much,

and your hatred is great.

⁸Is Israel a watchman?

Are God’s people prophets?

Everywhere Israel goes, traps are set for him.

He is an enemy in God’s house.

⁹The people of Israel have gone deep into sin

as the people of Gibeah ⁿ did.

The Lord will remember the evil things they have done,

and he will punish their sins.

¹⁰“When I found Israel,

it was like finding grapes in the desert.

Your ancestors were like

finding the first figs on the fig tree.

But when they came to Baal Peor,

they began worshiping an idol,

and they became as hateful as the thing they worshiped.

¹¹Israel’s glory will fly away like a bird;

there will be no more pregnancy, no more births, no more getting pregnant.

¹²But even if the Israelites bring up children,

I will take them all away.

How terrible it will be for them

when I go away from them!

¹³I have seen Israel, like Tyre,

given a pleasant place.

But the people of Israel will soon bring out

their children to be killed.”

¹⁴Lord, give them what they should have.

What will you give them?

Make their women unable to have children;

give them dried-up breasts that cannot feed their babies.

¹⁵“The Israelites were very wicked in Gilgal,

so I have hated them there.

Because of the sinful things they have done,

I will force them to leave my land.

I will no longer love them;

their leaders have turned against me.

¹⁶Israel is beaten down;

its root is dying, and it has no fruit.

If they have more children,

I will kill the children they love.”

¹⁷God will reject them,

because they have not obeyed him;

they will wander among the nations.

Israel Will Pay for Sin

10Israel is like a large vine

that produced plenty of fruit.

As the people became richer,

they built more altars for idols.

As their land became better,

they put up better stone pillars to honor gods.

²Their heart was false,

and now they must pay for their guilt.

The Lord will break down their altars;

he will destroy their holy stone pillars.

³Then they will say, “We have no king,

because we didn’t honor the Lord.

As for the king,

he couldn’t do anything for us.”

⁴They make many false promises

and agreements which they don’t keep.

So people sue each other in court;

they are like poisonous weeds growing in a plowed field.

⁵The people from Israel are worried about

the calf-shaped idol at Beth Aven.

The people will cry about it,

and the priests will cry about it.

They used to shout for joy about its glory,

⁶but it will be carried off to Assyria

as a gift to the great king.

Israel will be disgraced,

and the people will be ashamed for not obeying.

⁷Israel will be destroyed;

its king will be like a chip of wood floating on the water.

⁸The places of false worship will be destroyed,

the places where Israel sins.

Thorns and weeds will grow up

and cover their altars.

Then they will say to the mountains, “Cover us!”

and to the hills, “Fall on us!”

⁹“Israel, you have sinned since the time of Gibeah, ⁿ

and the people there have continued sinning.

But war will surely overwhelm them in Gibeah,

because of the evil they have done there.

¹⁰When I am ready,

I will come to punish them.

Nations will come together against them,

and they will be punished for their double sins.

¹¹Israel is like a well-trained young cow

that likes to thresh grain.

I will put a yoke on her neck

and make her work hard in the field.

Israel will plow,

and Judah will break up the ground.

¹²I said, ‘Plant goodness,

harvest the fruit of loyalty,

plow the new ground of knowledge.

Look for the Lord until he comes

and pours goodness on you like water.’

¹³But you have plowed evil

and harvested trouble;

you have eaten the fruit of your lies.

Because you have trusted in your own power

and your many soldiers,

¹⁴your people will hear the noise of battle,

and all your strong, walled cities will be destroyed.

It will be like the time King Shalman

destroyed Beth Arbel in battle,

when mothers and their children were bashed to death.

¹⁵The same will happen to you, people of Bethel,

because you did so much evil.

When the sun comes up,

the king of Israel will die.