Hosea 9

1Do not rejoice, Israel, with exultation like the peoples, for you have played the prostitute away from your God; you have loved a prostitute’s payment on every threshing floor of grain.

2Threshing floor and winepress will not feed them, and new wine will fail her.

3They will not remain in the land of Yahweh; Ephraim will return to Egypt, and in Assyria they will eat unclean food.

4They will not pour out wine offerings to Yahweh, and their sacrifices will not please him. They will be like mourners’ bread to them; all who eat it will become unclean. For their bread will be for themselves alone; it will not enter the house of Yahweh.

5What will you do on the day of appointed assembly, and on the day of the feast of Yahweh?

6For behold, they have gone away from destruction; Egypt will gather them, Memphis will bury them. Nettles will possess the precious things of their silver; thorns will be in their tents.

7The days of punishment have come; the days of repayment have come; Israel will know it. The prophet is a fool; the man of the spirit is mad, because of the greatness of your iniquity and your great hostility.

8Ephraim’s watchman is with my God; the prophet is a fowler’s snare on all his ways, and hostility is in the house of his God.

9They have gone deep into corruption, 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-ripe fruit on the fig tree in its first season I saw your fathers. They came to Baal-peor and consecrated themselves to shame, and they became detestable like the thing they loved.

11Ephraim—their glory will fly away like a bird—from birth, from the womb, and from conception.

12Even if they raise their children, I will bereave them so that not a man remains; for indeed, woe to them when I depart from them.

13Ephraim, as I have seen, is planted in a pleasant pasture like Tyre; but Ephraim must bring out his children to the killer.

14Give them, O Yahweh—what will you give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts.

15All their evil is at Gilgal; indeed, there I hated them because of the evil of their deeds. I will drive them out of my house; I will no longer love them. All their princes are rebels.

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

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