Days of Desolation Are Coming
9 Do not rejoice, O Israel,
do not celebrate like the peoples—
for so you have gone whoring away from your God.
You have loved a prostitute’s pay,
on every grain-threshing-floor.
2 Threshing-floor and wine-press will not sustain them,
and new wine will fail her.
3 They will not dwell in Adonai’s land.
Instead Ephraim will return to Egypt,
and eat unclean food in Assyria.
4 They will pour no wine-offerings to Adonai—
they would not be pleasing to Him.
Their sacrifices will be like
the bread of mourners for them.
All that eat it will be defiled,
for their bread is for their appetite,
not coming into the House of Adonai.
5 What will you do for a moed
or for the day of Adonai’s feast?
6 Look, even if they escape the desolation,
Egypt will gather them up;
Memphis will bury them.
And their precious silver treasures?
Weeds will possess them.
Thorns will be in their tents.
7 The days of punishment have come;
the days of retribution have come.
Let Israel know! The prophet is a fool;
the man of the spirit is mad!
For great is your iniquity
and great the hostility.
8 Ephraim is a watchman with my God,
a prophet.
A bird catcher’s trap is on all his paths.
Hostility is 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 sin.
10 “Like grapes in the wilderness
I found Israel.
Like early fruit on a fig tree in its first season
I saw your fathers.
They came to Baal-peor
and devoted themselves to shame.
So they became as detestable
as the thing they loved.
11 Ephraim’s glory flies away like a bird—
no birth, no pregnancy, no conception!
12 For if they should raise their children,
I would make them childless to the last man.
Yes, woe to them
when I depart from them!
13 Ephraim, as I have seen,
is like Tyre, planted in a meadow,
but Ephraim will bring his children out to the slayer.”
14 Give them, Adonai, what will You give?
Give them a miscarrying womb
and dried up breasts.
15 “All their wickedness is at Gilgal,
for there I despised them.
Because of their wicked practices,
I will drive them out of My House.
I will love them no more.
All their princes are rebellious.
16 Ephraim is blighted;
their root is withered;
they bear no fruit.
Even if they bring forth children,
I will slay the cherished ones in their wombs.”
17 My God will cast them off,
since they did not listen to Him.
So they will become wanderers among the nations.