9
1 Do not rejoice, Israel, with exultation like the peoples, for you have prostituted yourself, turning away from your God.
You have loved a prostitute’s wages on every grain threshing floor.
2 Threshing floor and winepress will not feed them, and the new wine will fail her.
3 They will not remain in the LORD’s land.
Ephraim will return to Egypt, and in Assyria they will eat unclean food.
4 They will not pour out wine offerings to the LORD, nor will their sacrifices please him.
They will be like mourners’ bread to them;
all who eat it will be defiled.
Their bread will be only for their own appetite;
it will not come into the house of the LORD.
5 What will you do on the day of the appointed feast, on the day of the LORD’s festival?
6 For they have gone away from devastation.
Egypt will gather them;
Memphis will bury them.
Nettles will take possession of their precious things of silver, and thorns will grow in their tents.
7 The days of punishment have come;
the days of retribution have come.
Israel will know it.
“The prophet is a fool;
the man of the spirit is mad!”—because your iniquity is great, and hostility abounds.
8 The prophet is Ephraim’s watchman with my God.
Yet a fowler’s snare lies on all his paths, and hostility in the house of his God.
9 They have sunk deep into corruption, as in the days of Gibeah.
He will remember their iniquity and punish their sins.
10 “Like grapes in the wilderness I found Israel;
like the first ripe fruit on a fig tree in its first season I saw your fathers.
But they went to Baal-peor and consecrated themselves to shame.
They became detestable like the thing they loved.
11 As for Ephraim, their glory will fly away like a bird—no birth, no pregnancy, no conception.
12 Even if they rear their children, I will bereave them until no one remains.
Woe to them also when I depart from them!
13 Ephraim, as I have seen him, is like Tyre, planted in a meadow.
But Ephraim must bring out his children to the slayer.”
14 Give them, O LORD—what will you give?
Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts.
15 “All their wickedness is in Gilgal;
there I hated them.
Because of the evil of their deeds, I will drive them out of my house.
I will love them no more;
all their princes are rebels.
16 Ephraim is stricken;
their root is dried up.
They will bear no fruit.
Even if they give birth, I will put to death the beloved offspring of their womb.”
17 My God will reject them because they have not listened to him, and they will be wanderers among the nations.