Hosea 9

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Days of Punishment Have Come

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.

Threshing floor and wine press will not feed them,

And the new wine will deceive them.

They will not remain in the land of Yahweh,

But Ephraim will return to Egypt,

And in Assyria they will eat unclean food.

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.

What will you do on the day of the appointed festival

And on the day of the feast of Yahweh?

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.

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.

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.

They have dug deep in corruption

As in the days of Gibeah;

He will remember their iniquity;

He will punish their sins.

Grapes in the Wilderness

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.

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

No birth, no pregnancy, and no conception!

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!

Ephraim, as I have seen,

Is planted in a pasture like Tyre;

But Ephraim will bring out his children for killing.

Give them, O Yahweh—what will You give?

Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts.

All their evil is at Gilgal;

Indeed, I came to hate them there!

Because of the evil of their deeds

I will drive them out of My house!

I will love them no more;

All their princes are rebels.

Ephraim is stricken; their root is dried up;

They will bear no fruit.

Even though they bear children,

I will put to death the desirable ones of their womb.

My God will despise them

Because they have not listened to Him;

And they will be those who flee among the nations.

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