Punishment for Israel

1“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.

2Neither threshing floor nor winepress will sustain them,

and the new wine will disappoint her.

3They will not live in the LORD’s land—

Ephraim will return to Egypt,

and they will eat unclean food in Assyria.

4They 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?

6Look! They have gone away because of the destruction—

Egypt will gather them up,

and Memphisa will bury them.

Weeds will overgrow their inheritance,b

and thorns will growc in their tents.

7The 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 youd is great.

8While 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.

9They have corrupted themselves deeply,

as did Gibeahe in its day.

Therefore Godf will remember their lawlessness,

and he will pay them back for their sins.

10“I found Israel,

as one findsg 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.

11The glory of Ephraim will fly away like a bird—

no birth, no pregnancy, not even a conception.

12Even if they rear their children,

I will, in turn, make them childless—

in fact, woe to them

when I turn away from them!

13Ephraim, as I see it, is like Tyre,

planted in a comfortable place;

Ephraim will bear children

but they will be executed.”

14Give them, LORD—

What will you give?

You will give them a womb that miscarries and dry breasts.

15“All of their wickedness startedi 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.

16Ephraim 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.”