Punishment for Israel’s Sin

9 Do not rejoice, O Israel!

Do not exulta as other nations do;

for you have played the whore, departing from your God.

You have loved a prostitute’s pay

on all threshing floors.

2 Threshing floor and wine vat shall not feed them,

and the new wine shall fail them.

3 They shall not remain in the land of the Lord;

but Ephraim shall return to Egypt,

and in Assyria they shall eat unclean food.

4 They shall not pour drink offerings of wine to the Lord,

and their sacrifices shall not please him.

Such sacrifices shall be like mourners’ bread;

all who eat of it shall be defiled;

for their bread shall be for their hunger only;

it shall not come to the house of the Lord.

5 What will you do on the day of appointed festival,

and on the day of the festival of the Lord?

6 For even if they escape destruction,

Egypt shall gather them,

Memphis shall bury them.

Nettles shall possess their precious things of silver;b

thorns shall be in their tents.

7 The days of punishment have come,

the days of recompense have come;

Israel cries,c

“The prophet is a fool,

the man of the spirit is mad!”

Because of your great iniquity,

your hostility is great.

8 The prophet is a sentinel for my God over Ephraim,

yet a fowler’s snare is on all his ways,

and hostility in the house of his God.

9 They have deeply corrupted themselves

as in the days of Gibeah;

he will remember their iniquity,

he will punish their sins.

10 Like grapes in the wilderness,

I found Israel.

Like the first fruit on the fig tree,

in its first season,

I saw your ancestors.

But they came to Baal-peor,

and consecrated themselves to a thing of shame,

and became detestable like the thing they loved.

11 Ephraim’s glory shall fly away like a bird—

no birth, no pregnancy, no conception!

12 Even if they bring up children,

I will bereave them until no one is left.

Woe to them indeed

when I depart from them!

13 Once I saw Ephraim as a young palm planted in a lovely meadow,d

but now Ephraim must lead out his children for slaughter.

14 Give them, O Lord—

what will you give?

Give them a miscarrying womb

and dry breasts.

15 Every evil of theirs began at Gilgal;

there I came to hate them.

Because of the wickedness of their deeds

I will drive them out of my house.

I will love them no more;

all their officials are rebels.

16 Ephraim is stricken,

their root is dried up,

they shall bear no fruit.

Even though they give birth,

I will kill the cherished offspring of their womb.

17 Because they have not listened to him,

my God will reject them;

they shall become wanderers among the nations.