Hosea 9

¹ Do not rejoice, O Israel, with exultation like the nations!
For you have been unfaithful, departing from your God.
You have loved a prostitute's wages
on every threshing floor.

² Threshing floor and wine vat will not feed them,
and the new wine will fail them.

³ They will not remain in the land of the LORD;
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.
Their bread will be like mourners' bread;
all who eat it will be defiled.
For their bread will be for their hunger alone;
it will not come into the house of the LORD.

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

⁶ For look — they have gone because of destruction.
Egypt will gather them;
Memphis will bury them.
Nettles will possess their treasures of silver;
thorns will grow in their tents.

⁷ The days of punishment have come;
the days of reckoning have come —
let Israel know it!
The prophet is a fool;
the man of the spirit is insane,
because of your great guilt
and great hostility.

⁸ The watchman of Ephraim is with my God;
yet the prophet — a fowler's snare is on all his paths,
and hostility in the house of his God.

⁹ They have deeply corrupted themselves
as in the days of Gibeah.
He will remember their guilt;
he will punish their sins.

¹⁰ Like grapes in the wilderness,
I found Israel.
Like an early fig on the fig tree in its first season,
I saw your ancestors.
But they came to Baal-peor
and devoted themselves to that shameful thing,
and became detestable like the thing they loved.

¹¹ Ephraim — their glory will fly away like a bird:
no birth, no pregnancy, no conception.

¹² Even if they raise their children,
I will bereave them until no one is left.
Indeed, woe to them
when I turn away from them!

¹³ Ephraim, as I have seen,
was planted like Tyre in a meadow.
But Ephraim will 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 evil began at Gilgal;
indeed, there I came to hate them.
Because of the evil of their deeds
I will drive them from my house.
I will love them no more;
all their leaders are rebels.

¹⁶ Ephraim is struck;
their root is dried up;
they will bear no fruit.
Even if they give birth,
I will put to death the cherished offspring of their womb.

¹⁷ My God will reject them
because they have not listened to him,
and they will become wanderers among the nations.