Hosea 9

The harvest and the exile

1Do not rejoice, Israel;
do not celebrate like the peoples.
You have prostituted yourself, leaving your God;
you have loved a prostitute’s wages
on every grain-threshing floor. 2Threshing floor and winepress will not feed them;
new wine will fail her. 3They will not remain in the LORD’s land.
Ephraim will return to Egypt,
and in Assyria they will eat unclean food. 4They will pour out no wine for the LORD,
and their sacrifices will not please him.
Their food will be like mourners’ bread:
all who eat it will become unclean.
Their bread will be only for their own hunger;
it will not enter the house of the LORD. 5What will you do on the appointed day,
on the day of the LORD’s festival? 6Look, even if they escape devastation,
Egypt will gather them; Memphis will bury them.
Nettles will take over their precious silver,
and thorns their tents. 7The days of reckoning have come;
the days of repayment have come.
Israel will know it.
“The prophet is a fool;
the man of the spirit is mad!”
So great is your guilt, so great your hostility. 8The prophet is Ephraim’s watchman with my God,
yet a birdcatcher’s trap lies on all his paths,
and hostility fills the house of his God. 9They have sunk deep into corruption,
as in the days of Gibeah.
He will remember their guilt
and punish their sins.

Fruit that withers

10“I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness.
I saw your ancestors like the first fruit on a young fig tree.
But they came to Baal-peor
and devoted themselves to Shame.
They became as detestable as what they loved. 11Ephraim’s glory will fly away like a bird—
no birth, no pregnancy, no conception. 12Even if they raise children,
I will bereave them until no one is left.
Woe to them when I depart from them! 13Ephraim, as I saw him, was like Tyre, planted in a pleasant place.
Yet Ephraim must bring his children out to a killer.” 14Give them, LORD—what will you give?
Give them a miscarrying womb
and breasts that have dried up. 15“All their evil was at Gilgal;
there I came to hate them.
For the evil of their deeds
I will drive them from my house.
I will love them no longer;
all their rulers are rebels. 16Ephraim is struck down;
their root has dried up, and they will bear no fruit.
Even if they give birth,
I will kill their cherished children.” 17My God will reject them
because they have not listened to him.
They will wander among the nations.