Days of Punishment Have Come
aDo not be glad, O Israel, with rejoicing like the peoples!
For you have bplayed the harlot, forsaking your God.
You have loved harlots’ earnings on every threshing floor.
2 Threshing floor and wine press will anot feed them,
And the new wine will deceive them.
3 They will not remain in athe land of Yahweh,
But Ephraim will return to bEgypt,
And in cAssyria they will eat dunclean food.
4 They will not pour out drink offerings of awine to Yahweh;
bTheir sacrifices will not please Him.
Their bread will be like mourners’ bread;
All who eat of it will be cdefiled,
For their bread will be for themselves alone;
It will not enter the house of Yahweh.
5 aWhat will you do on the day of the appointed festival
And on the day of the bfeast of Yahweh?
6 For behold, they will go because of destruction;
Egypt will gather them up; aMemphis will bury them.
Weeds will possess their desirable items of silver;
bThorns will be in their tents.
7 The days of apunishment have come;
The days of brecompense have come;
Let Israel know this!
The prophet is an cignorant fool,
The inspired man has dmadness,
Because of the abundance of your einiquity
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 adeep in corruption
As in the days of bGibeah;
He will cremember their iniquity;
He will punish their sins.
Grapes in the Wilderness
10 I found Israel like agrapes in the wilderness;
I saw your fathers as the bearliest fruit on the fig tree in its first season.
But they came to cBaal‑peor and devoted themselves to dshame,
And they became as edetestable as that which they loved.
11 As for Ephraim, their aglory 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, awoe to them indeed when I depart from them!
13 Ephraim, as I have seen,
Is planted in a pasture like aTyre;
But Ephraim will bring out his children for killing.
14 Give them, O Yahweh—what will You give?
Give them a amiscarrying womb and dry breasts.
15 All their evil is at aGilgal;
Indeed, I came to hate them there!
Because of the bevil of their deeds
I will drive them out of My house!
I will love them no more;
All their princes are crebels.
16 aEphraim is stricken; their root is dried up;
They will bear bno fruit.
Even though they bear children,
I will put to death the cdesirable ones of their womb.
17 My God will despise them
Because they have anot listened to Him;
And they will be bthose who flee among the nations.