Hosea 9

Judgment of Israel’s Sin

1 Do not rejoice, O Israel, with joy like other peoples,

For you have played the harlot against your God.

You have made love for hire on every threshing floor.

2 The threshing floor and the winepress

Shall not feed them,

And the new wine shall fail in her.

3 They shall not dwell in the Lord’s land,

But Ephraim shall return to Egypt,

And shall eat unclean things in Assyria.

4 They shall not offer wine offerings to the Lord,

Nor shall their sacrifices be pleasing to Him.

It shall be like bread of mourners to them;

All who eat it shall be defiled.

For their bread shall be for their own life;

It shall not come into the house of the Lord.

5 What will you do in the appointed day,

And in the day of the feast of the Lord?

6 For indeed they are gone because of destruction.

Egypt shall gather them up;

Memphis shall bury them.

Nettles shall possess their valuables of silver;

Thorns shall be in their tents.

7 The days of punishment have come;

The days of recompense have come.

Israel knows!

The prophet is a fool,

The spiritual man is insane,

Because of the greatness of your iniquity and great enmity.

8 The watchman of Ephraim is with my God;

But the prophet is a fowler’s snare in all his ways—

Enmity in the house of his God.

9 They are deeply corrupted,

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 firstfruits on the fig tree in its first season.

But they went to Baal Peor,

And separated themselves to that shame;

They became an abomination like the thing they loved.

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

No birth, no pregnancy, and no conception!

12 Though they bring up their children,

Yet I will bereave them to the last man.

Yes, woe to them when I depart from them!

13 Just as I saw Ephraim like Tyre, planted in a pleasant place,

So Ephraim will bring out his children to the murderer.”

14 Give them, O 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 evil of their deeds

I will drive them from My house;

I will love them no more.

All their princes are rebellious.

16 Ephraim is stricken,

Their root is dried up;

They shall bear no fruit.

Yes, were they to bear children,

I would kill the darlings of their womb.”

17 My God will cast them away,

Because they did not obey Him;

And they shall be wanderers among the nations.