The Punishment of Israel

¹Do not rejoice, O Israel!

Do not exult like the peoples,

for you have played the whore departing from your God.

You have loved a prostitute’s wages

on every threshing floor.

²The threshing floor and the winepress will not feed them,

and the new wine will fail in her.

³They will not dwell in the land of the Lord ;[#Lev 25:23]

but Ephraim will return to Egypt,

and they will eat unclean things in Assyria.

⁴They will not offer wine offerings to the Lord ,

and their sacrifices will not please Him.

Their sacrifices will be like the bread of mourners;

all who eat of it will be defiled.

For their bread will be only to satisfy their own hunger;

it will not come into the house of the Lord .

⁵What will you do on the appointed day,[#Isa 10:3; Jer 5:31]

and on the day of the festival of the Lord ?

⁶For behold, they are gone because of destruction.

Egypt will gather them,

and Memphis will bury them.

Nettles will possess their pleasant things of silver,

and thorns will be in their tents.

⁷The days of punishment have come;[#Isa 10:3; Mic 7:4]

the days of recompense have come.

Israel knows!

The prophet is a fool;

the man of the spirit is insane,

because of your great iniquity and great hatred.

⁸The watchman of Ephraim is a prophet[#Eze 3:17]

for my God;

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

and hatred in the house of his God.

⁹They have deeply corrupted themselves

as in the days of Gibeah.

He will remember their iniquity,

He will punish their sins.

¹⁰Like grapes in the wilderness,

I found Israel.

Like the first fruit on the fig tree in its first season,

I saw your fathers.

But they went to Baal-peor

and consecrated themselves to a thing of shame,

and they became an abomination like the thing they loved.

¹¹As for Ephraim, their glory shall fly away like a bird:[#Hos 4:7]

no birth, no pregnancy, no conception!

¹²Though they bring up their children,

I will bereave them until none are left.

Woe to them indeed,

when I depart from them!

¹³Just as I saw Ephraim like Tyre,[#Eze 26]

planted in a pleasant place,

so now Ephraim will bring out

his children for slaughter.

¹⁴Give them, O Lord —

what will You give?

Give them a miscarrying womb

and dry breasts.

¹⁵All their wickedness is in Gilgal,[#Hos 4:15]

for there I hated them.

Because of the wickedness of their deeds,

I will drive them out of My house.

I will love them no more.

All their princes are rebels.

¹⁶Ephraim is stricken,

their root is dried up,

they shall bear no fruit.

Even though they give birth,

I will slay the beloved offspring of their womb.

¹⁷My God will reject them

because they did not listen to Him,

and they will be wanderers among the nations.