Judgment of Israel’s Sin

¹ Do not rejoice, O Israel, with joy like other peoples,
For you have played the harlot against your God.
You have made love for hire on every threshing floor.
² The threshing floor and the winepress
Shall not feed them,
And the new wine shall fail in her.
³ They shall not dwell in the LORD’s land,
But Ephraim shall return to Egypt,
And shall eat unclean things in Assyria.
⁴ They shall not offer wine offerings to the LORD,
Nor shall their sacrifices be pleasing to Him.
It shall be like bread of mourners to them;
All who eat it shall be defiled.
For their bread shall be for their own life;
It shall not come into the house of the LORD.
⁵ What will you do in the appointed day,
And in the day of the feast of the LORD?
⁶ For indeed they are gone because of destruction.
Egypt shall gather them up;
Memphis shall bury them.
Nettles shall possess their valuables of silver;
Thorns shall be in their tents.
⁷ The days of punishment have come;
The days of recompense have come.
Israel knows!
The prophet is a fool,
The spiritual man is insane,
Because of the greatness of your iniquity and great enmity.
⁸ The watchman of Ephraim is with my God;
But the prophet is a fowler’s^[a] snare in all his ways—
Enmity in the house of his God.
⁹ They are deeply corrupted,
As in the days of Gibeah.
He will remember their iniquity;
He will punish their sins.
¹⁰ “ I found Israel
Like grapes in the wilderness;
I saw your fathers
As the firstfruits on the fig tree in its first season.
But they went to Baal Peor,
And separated themselves to that shame;
They became an abomination like the thing they loved.
¹¹ As for Ephraim, their glory shall fly away like a bird—
No birth, no pregnancy, and no conception!
¹² Though they bring up their children,
Yet I will bereave them to the last man.
Yes, woe to them when I depart from them!
¹³ Just as I saw Ephraim like Tyre, planted in a pleasant place,
So Ephraim will bring out his children to the murderer.”
¹⁴ Give them, O LORD—
What will You give?
Give them a miscarrying womb
And dry breasts!
¹⁵ “ All their wickedness is in Gilgal,
For there I hated them.
Because of the evil of their deeds
I will drive them from My house;
I will love them no more.
All their princes are rebellious.
¹⁶ Ephraim is stricken,
Their root is dried up;
They shall bear no fruit.
Yes, were they to bear children,
I would kill the darlings of their womb.”
¹⁷ My God will cast them away,
Because they did not obey Him;
And they shall be wanderers among the nations.