Punishment Coming for Israel and Judah

¹vHear this, O priests!

Pay attention, O house of Israel!

Give ear, O house of the king!

For the judgment is for you;

for wyou have been a snare at Mizpah

and a net spread upon xTabor.

²And ythe revolters zhave gone deep into slaughter,

but aI will discipline all of them.

³bI know Ephraim,

and Israel is not hidden from me;

for now, O Ephraim, you have played the whore;

Israel is defiled.

⁴cTheir deeds do not permit them

to return to their God.

For dthe spirit of whoredom is within them,

and they know not the Lord.

⁵eThe pride of Israel testifies to his face;1

Israel and fEphraim shall stumble in his guilt;

fJudah also shall stumble with them.

⁶gWith their flocks and herds they shall go

to seek the Lord,

gbut they will not find him;

hhe has withdrawn from them.

⁷iThey have dealt faithlessly with the Lord;

for they have borne alien children.

Now the new moon shall devour them with their fields.

⁸jBlow the horn in kGibeah,

the trumpet in lRamah.

Sound the alarm at mBeth-aven;

we follow you,2 O Benjamin!

⁹Ephraim shall become a desolation

in the day of punishment;

among the tribes of Israel

I make known what is sure.

¹⁰The princes of Judah have become

like nthose who move the landmark;

upon them I will pour out

my wrath like water.

¹¹Ephraim is ooppressed, crushed in judgment,

because he was determined to go after filth.3

¹²But I am plike a moth to Ephraim,

and plike dry rot to the house of Judah.

¹³When Ephraim saw his sickness,

and Judah qhis wound,

then Ephraim went rto Assyria,

and sent to the great king.4

sBut he is not able to cure you

or heal qyour wound.

¹⁴For I will be tlike a lion to uEphraim,

and like a young lion to the house of uJudah.

vI, even I, will tear and go away;

I will carry off, and no one shall rescue.

¹⁵wI will return again to my place,

until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face,

and xin their distress earnestly seek me.

Israel and Judah Are Unrepentant

¹“Come, let us yreturn to the Lord;

for zhe has torn us, that he may heal us;

he has struck us down, and ahe will bind us up.

²After two days bhe will revive us;

on the third day he will raise us up,

that we may live before him.

³cLet us know; clet us press on to know the Lord;

dhis going out is sure as the dawn;

he will come to us eas the showers,

fas the spring rains that water the earth.”

⁴What shall I do with you, gO hEphraim?

What shall I do with you, O hJudah?

Your love is ilike a morning cloud,

ilike the dew that goes early away.

⁵Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets;

I have slain them jby the words of my mouth,

and my judgment goes forth as the light.

⁶For kI desire steadfast love1 and not sacrifice,

lthe knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

⁷But mlike Adam they ntransgressed the covenant;

othere they dealt faithlessly with me.

⁸pGilead is a city of evildoers,

qtracked with blood.

⁹As robbers rlie in wait for a man,

so the priests band together;

they murder on the way to sShechem;

they commit villainy.

¹⁰In the house of Israel I have seen a horrible thing;

tEphraim's whoredom is there; uIsrael is defiled.

¹¹For you also, O uJudah, va harvest is appointed.

When wI restore the fortunes of my people,