Hosea 9

¹Don’t rejoice, Israel, to jubilation like the nations;

for you were unfaithful to your God.

You love the wages of a prostitute at every grain threshing floor.

²The threshing floor and the wine press won’t feed them,

and the new wine will fail her.

³They won’t dwell in the LORD’s land;

but Ephraim will return to Egypt,

and they will eat unclean food in Assyria.

⁴They won’t pour out wine offerings to the LORD,

neither will they be pleasing to him.

Their sacrifices will be to them like the bread of mourners;

all who eat of it will be polluted;

for their bread will be for their appetite.

It will not come into the LORD’s house.

⁵What will you do in the day of solemn assembly,

and in the day of the feast of the LORD?

⁶For, behold, when they flee destruction,

Egypt will gather them up.

Memphis will bury them.

Nettles will possess their pleasant things of silver.

Thorns will be in their tents.

⁷The days of visitation have come.

The days of reckoning have come.

Israel will consider the prophet to be a fool,

and the man who is inspired to be insane,

because of the abundance of your sins,

and because your hostility is great.

⁸A prophet watches over Ephraim with my God.

A fowler’s snare is on all of his paths,

and hostility in the house of his God.

⁹They have deeply corrupted themselves,

as in the days of Gibeah.

He will remember their iniquity.

He will punish them for their sins.

¹⁰I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness.

I saw your fathers as the first ripe in the fig tree at its first season;

but they came to Baal Peor, and consecrated themselves to the shameful thing,

and became abominable like that which they loved.

¹¹As for Ephraim, their glory will fly away like a bird.

There will be no birth, no one with child, and no conception.

¹²Though they bring up their children,

yet I will bereave them, so that not a man shall be left.

Indeed, woe also to them when I depart from them!

¹³I have seen Ephraim, like Tyre, planted in a pleasant place;

but Ephraim will bring out his children to the murderer.

¹⁴Give them—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 wickedness of their deeds, I will drive them out of my house!

I will love them no more.

All their princes are rebels.

¹⁶Ephraim is struck.

Their root has dried up.

They will bear no fruit.

Even though they give birth, yet I will kill the beloved ones of their womb.”

¹⁷My God will cast them away, because they didn’t listen to him;

and they will be wanderers among the nations.