Punishment for Israel
9 “Don’t celebrate, Israel, like other nations would rejoice,
because you left your God by committing fornication,
loving the profit you gained on all of the threshing floors.
2 Neither threshing floor nor winepress will sustain them,
and the new wine will disappoint her.
3 They will not live in the Lord’s land—
Ephraim will return to Egypt,
and they will eat unclean food in Assyria.
4 They won’t present wine offerings to the Lord,
nor will they please him.
Their sacrifices will seem like food for mourners—
everyone who eats them will become unclean;
none of them will enter the Temple of the Lord.
5 “What will you do on the designated holiday,
when the Lord’s festival comes?
6 Look! They have gone away because of the destruction—
Egypt will gather them up,
and Memphis[a] will bury them.
Weeds will overgrow their inheritance,[b]
and thorns will grow[c] in their tents.
7 The time for your judgment has now come;
payday is here—
and Israel knows it.
The prophet is a fool,
and the spiritual man is insane.
Because of your great sin,
the hatred against you[d] is great.
8 While Ephraim stands watch with my God,
the prophet has snares set that will trap his ways,
and hostility lodges in the Temple of his God.
9 They have corrupted themselves deeply,
as did Gibeah[e] in its day.
Therefore God[f] will remember their lawlessness,
and he will pay them back for their sins.
10 “I found Israel,
as one finds[g] grapes in the wilderness;
Your ancestors seemed to me like the fruit
gleaned from a fig tree’s first harvest.
When they went to Baal-peor,[h]
they devoted themselves to that filth,
and they became loathsome,
like what they loved.
11 The glory of Ephraim will fly away like a bird—
no birth, no pregnancy, not even a conception.
12 Even if they rear their children,
I will, in turn, make them childless—
in fact, woe to them
when I turn away from them!
13 Ephraim, as I see it, is like Tyre,
planted in a comfortable place;
Ephraim will bear children
but they will be executed.”
14 Give them, Lord—
What will you give?
You will give them a womb that miscarries and dry breasts.
15 “All of their wickedness started[i] in Gilgal,
because I began to hate them there.
Because of the wickedness of their behavior,
I will drive them from my Temple.
I will not love them anymore;
all their leaders are rebels.
16 Ephraim is blighted;[j]
its roots shriveled.
It can bear no fruit.
Even if they bear children,
I will kill their cherished offspring.
17 “My God will reject them,
because they did not obey him,
and they will become wanderers among the nations.”
Footnotes
- Hosea 9:6 So LXX. Heb. Moph; i.e. the capital of Lower Egypt
- Hosea 9:6 Lit. their precious silver
- Hosea 9:6 Lit. be
- Hosea 9:7 The Heb. lacks against you
- Hosea 9:9 Cf. Judg 19:1
- Hosea 9:9 Lit. he
- Hosea 9:10 The Heb. lacks finds
- Hosea 9:10 Cf. Num 25:1-3
- Hosea 9:15 The Heb. lacks started
- Hosea 9:16 Or stricken