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Arrival of divine judgment

Don’t rejoice, Israel!
        Don’t celebrate as other nations do;
        for as whores you have gone away from your God.
        You have loved a prostitute’s pay
            on all threshing floors of grain.
Threshing floor and wine vat won’t feed them;
        the new wine will fail them.
They won’t remain in the land of the Lord;
        but Ephraim will return to Egypt,
        and in Assyria they will eat unclean food.
They won’t pour wine as an offering to the Lord;
        their sacrifices won’t please him.
    Such sacrifices will be like food for those who touch the dead;
        all who eat of it will be unclean;
        their bread will be for their hunger alone;
            it will not come to the Lord’s house.
What will you do on the day of appointed festival,
        on the day of the Lord’s festival?
Even if they escape destruction,
        Egypt will gather them,
        Memphis will bury them.
    Briars will possess their precious things of silver;[a]
        thorns will be in their tents.
The days of punishment have come;
        the days of judgment have arrived;
    Israel cries,
        “The prophet is a fool,
        the spiritual man is mad!”
    Because of your great wickedness,
        your rejection of me is great.

Tragic consequences

The prophet is God’s watchman
    looking over Ephraim,
    yet a hunter’s trap is set, covering all his ways,
        and rejection is in his God’s house.
They have corrupted themselves terribly
        as in the days of Gibeah;
    he will remember their wickedness;
        he will punish their sins.

10 Like grapes in the wilderness,
        I found Israel.
    In its first season,
    like the first fruit on the fig tree,
        I saw your ancestors.
    But they came to Baal-peor,
        and worshipped a thing of shame;
    they became detestable like the thing they loved.[b]
11 Ephraim’s glory will fly away like a bird—
        no birth, no pregnancy, no conception!
12 Though they bring up children,
        I will make them childless
        until no one is left.
    Doom to them indeed when I leave them!
13 When I looked toward Tyre,
    Ephraim was planted in a lovely meadow;
        but now Ephraim must lead out his children for slaughter.
14 Give them, Lord
        what will you give them?
    Give them a womb that miscarries
        and breasts that are dried up.
15 Every wickedness of theirs began at Gilgal;
        there I came to hate them.
    Because of the wickedness of their deeds
        I will drive them out of my house.
        I will love them no more;
            all their officials are rebels.
16 Ephraim is sick,
        their root is dried up,
        they will bear no fruit.
    Even though they give birth,
        I will put to death their much-loved little ones.
17 Because they haven’t listened to him,
        my God will reject them;
        they will wander among the nations.

Footnotes

  1. Hosea 9:6 Or the proud glory pertaining to their silver; Heb uncertain
  2. Hosea 9:10 Heb uncertain

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