Hosea 9

9 ¹Do not rejoice, Israel; do not exult like the nations. For you have been unfaithful, forsaking your Father; you have loved a prostitute's wages on every threshing floor.

²Threshing floor and winepress will not feed them, and the new wine will fail them. ³They will not remain in our Father's land; Ephraim will return to Egypt, and in Assyria they will eat unclean food. ⁴They will not pour out wine offerings to our Father, and their sacrifices will not please him. Their bread will be like the bread of mourners; all who eat it will be defiled. For their bread will feed only their hunger; it will not enter the house of our Father.

⁵What will you do on the day of the appointed feast, on the day of our Father's festival? ⁶For look—they are fleeing from destruction, but Egypt will gather them and Memphis will bury them. Nettles will overrun their silver treasures; thorns will fill their tents.

⁷The days of punishment have come; the days of reckoning have come—let Israel know it! The prophet is a fool, the man inspired by the spirit is mad, because your sin is great and your hostility is great. ⁸The prophet is the watchman of Ephraim, with my Father; yet a bird trap lies on all his paths, and hostility in the house of his Father. ⁹They have sunk deep into corruption, as in the days of Gibeah. He will remember their wrongdoing; he will punish their sins. ^a a v9 Gibeah was the scene of a horrific gang rape that triggered a tribal civil war — Israel's darkest hour (Judges 19–20).

¹⁰Like grapes in the wilderness I found Israel; like the first fruit on the fig tree in its first season I saw your ancestors. But they came to Baal-peor and consecrated themselves to shame, and they became as detestable as the thing they loved. ^b b v10 At Baal-peor, Israel worshipped a pagan god and fell into mass sexual immorality — their first great betrayal in the promised land (Numbers 25). ¹¹Ephraim's glory will fly away like a bird—no birth, no pregnancy, no conception. ¹²Even if they raise their children, I will bereave them until no one is left. Yes, woe to them when I turn away from them! ¹³Ephraim, as I have seen, was planted like Tyre in a meadow; yet Ephraim must lead his children out to the slaughter.

¹⁴Give them, our Father—what will you give them? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts.

¹⁵"All their evil is at Gilgal; there I rejected them for their evil deeds; I will drive them from my house; I will no longer show them my love; all their officials are rebels. ¹⁶Ephraim is struck down; their root is dried up; they will bear no fruit. Even if they give birth, I will put their cherished children to death."

¹⁷My Father will reject them because they have not listened to him; they will become wanderers among the nations.