Hosea 9:1-13 ▼

1 Do not be glad, O Israel, with rejoicing like the peoples! For you have played the harlot, forsaking your God. You have loved harlots’ earnings on every threshing floor.

2 Threshing floor and wine press will not feed them, And the new wine will deceive them.

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

4 They will not pour out drink offerings of wine to Yahweh; Their sacrifices will not please Him. Their bread will be like mourners’ bread; All who eat of it will be defiled, For their bread will be for themselves alone; It will not enter the house of Yahweh.

5 What will you do on the day of the appointed festival And on the day of the feast of Yahweh?

6 For behold, they will go because of destruction; Egypt will gather them up; Memphis will bury them. Weeds will possess their desirable items of silver; Thorns will be in their tents.

7 The days of punishment have come; The days of recompense have come; Let Israel know this! The prophet is an ignorant fool, The inspired man has madness, Because of the abundance of your iniquity And because your hostility has abounded.

8 Ephraim was a watchman with my God, a prophet; Yet the snare of a bird catcher is in all his ways, And there is only hostility in the house of his God.

9 They have dug deep in corruption 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 earliest fruit on the fig tree in its first season. But they came to Baal-peor and devoted themselves to shame, And they became as detestable as that which they loved.

11 As for Ephraim, their glory will fly away like a bird— No birth, no pregnancy, and no conception!

12 Though they bring up their children, Yet I will bereave them until not a man is left. Surely, woe to them indeed when I depart from them!

13 Ephraim, as I have seen, Is planted in a pasture like Tyre; But Ephraim will bring out his children for killing.