Hosea - The Old Testament

¹ No merrymaking, Israel, for you, no rejoicing like other peoples, for you have deserted your God to play the whore, you have loved the fee of prostitution on every threshing-floor.

² The threshing-floor and wine-press will not feed them; they will be disappointed of new wine.

³ No more will they live in Yahweh's country; Ephraim will have to go back to Egypt, and eat polluted food in Assyria.

⁴ No more will they pour libations of wine to Yahweh, and their sacrifices will not win his favour but will be like funeral fare for them: whoever eats them will be polluted; for their food will be for themselves alone, not being offered in Yahweh's home.

⁵ What will you do on the solemn feast-day, on the day of Yahweh's festival?

⁶ What a scene of devastastion they have left! Egypt will round them up, Memphis will bury them, nettles will inherit their fields and thorn-bushes invade their homesteads.

⁷ The days of punishment have come, the days of retribution are here; Israel knows it! 'The prophet is mad and the inspired man a fool!' Great has been your guilt- all the greater then the hostility!

⁸ The watchman of Ephraim is with my God: it is the prophet- and a fowler's trap is placed on all his paths; and in the shrine of his God there is enmity towards him.

⁹ They have become deeply corrupt as in the days of Gibeah; he will remember their guilt, he will punish their sins.

¹⁰ It was like finding grapes in the desert when I found Israel, like seeing early fruit on a fig tree when I saw your ancestors; but when they reached Baal-Peor they devoted themselves to Shame and became as loathsome as the thing they loved.

¹¹ The glory of Ephraim will fly away like a bird: no giving birth, no pregnancy, no conceiving.

¹² If they rear their children, I shall take them away before they grow up! Woe to them indeed when I leave them!

¹³ Ephraim looked to me like Tyre, planted in a meadow, so Ephraim will present his children to the slaughterer.

¹⁴ Give them, Yahweh- what are you to give? - give them wombs that miscarry and dried-up breasts.

¹⁵ Their wickedness appeared in full at Gilgal, there I came to hate them. Because of the wickedness of their deeds I shall drive them from my home, I shall love them no longer; all their princes are rebels.

¹⁶ Ephraim is blasted, their root has dried out, they will bear no more fruit. And even if they do bear children I shall slaughter the darlings of their womb.

¹⁷ Because they have not listened to him, my God will cast them off and they will become wanderers among the nations.