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¹Hear this, O priests! Pay attention, O house of Israel! Give ear, O house of the king! For the judgment is for you; for you have been a snare at Mizpah and a net spread upon Tabor.

²And the revolters have gone deep into slaughter, but I will discipline all of them.

³I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hidden from me; for now, O Ephraim, you have played the whore; Israel is defiled.

⁴Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God. For the spirit of whoredom is within them, and they know not the LORD.

⁵The pride of Israel testifies to his face; Israel and Ephraim shall stumble in his guilt; Judah also shall stumble with them.

⁶With their flocks and herds they shall go to seek the LORD, but they will not find him; he has withdrawn from them.

⁷They have dealt faithlessly with the LORD; for they have borne alien children. Now the new moon shall devour them with their fields.

⁸Blow the horn in Gibeah, the trumpet in Ramah. Sound the alarm at Beth-aven; we follow you, 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 those who move the landmark; upon them I will pour out my wrath like water.

¹¹Ephraim is oppressed, crushed in judgment, because he was determined to go after filth.

¹²But I am like a moth to Ephraim, and like dry rot to the house of Judah.

¹³When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah his wound, then Ephraim went to Assyria, and sent to the great king. But he is not able to cure you or heal your wound.

¹⁴For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear and go away; I will carry off, and no one shall rescue.

¹⁵I will return again to my place, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in their distress earnestly seek me.

¹“Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.

²After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him.

³Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.”

⁴What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away.

⁵Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light.

⁶For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

⁷But like Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me.

⁸Gilead is a city of evildoers, tracked with blood.

⁹As robbers lie in wait for a man, so the priests band together; they murder on the way to Shechem; they commit villainy.

¹⁰In the house of Israel I have seen a horrible thing; Ephraim's whoredom is there; Israel is defiled.

¹¹For you also, O Judah, a harvest is appointed. When I restore the fortunes of my people,

¹when I would heal Israel, the iniquity of Ephraim is revealed, and the evil deeds of Samaria, for they deal falsely; the thief breaks in, and the bandits raid outside.

²But they do not consider that I remember all their evil. Now their deeds surround them; they are before my face.

³By their evil they make the king glad, and the princes by their treachery.

⁴They are all adulterers; they are like a heated oven whose baker ceases to stir the fire, from the kneading of the dough until it is leavened.

⁵On the day of our king, the princes became sick with the heat of wine; he stretched out his hand with mockers.

⁶For with hearts like an oven they approach their intrigue; all night their anger smolders; in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.

⁷All of them are hot as an oven, and they devour their rulers. All their kings have fallen, and none of them calls upon me.

⁸Ephraim mixes himself with the peoples; Ephraim is a cake not turned.

⁹Strangers devour his strength, and he knows it not; gray hairs are sprinkled upon him, and he knows it not.

¹⁰The pride of Israel testifies to his face; yet they do not return to the LORD their God, nor seek him, for all this.

¹¹Ephraim is like a dove, silly and without sense, calling to Egypt, going to Assyria.

¹²As they go, I will spread over them my net; I will bring them down like birds of the heavens; I will discipline them according to the report made to their congregation.

¹³Woe to them, for they have strayed from me! Destruction to them, for they have rebelled against me! I would redeem them, but they speak lies against me.

¹⁴They do not cry to me from the heart, but they wail upon their beds; for grain and wine they gash themselves; they rebel against me.

¹⁵Although I trained and strengthened their arms, yet they devise evil against me.

¹⁶They return, but not upward; they are like a treacherous bow; their princes shall fall by the sword because of the insolence of their tongue. This shall be their derision in the land of Egypt.

¹Set the trumpet to your lips! One like a vulture is over the house of the LORD, because they have transgressed my covenant and rebelled against my law.

²To me they cry, “My God, we — Israel — know you.”

³Israel has spurned the good; the enemy shall pursue him.

⁴They made kings, but not through me. They set up princes, but I knew it not. With their silver and gold they made idols for their own destruction.

⁵I have spurned your calf, O Samaria. My anger burns against them. How long will they be incapable of innocence?

⁶For it is from Israel; a craftsman made it; it is not God. The calf of Samaria shall be broken to pieces.

⁷For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads; it shall yield no flour; if it were to yield, strangers would devour it.

⁸Israel is swallowed up; already they are among the nations as a useless vessel.

⁹For they have gone up to Assyria, a wild donkey wandering alone; Ephraim has hired lovers.

¹⁰Though they hire allies among the nations, I will soon gather them up. And the king and princes shall soon writhe because of the tribute.

¹¹Because Ephraim has multiplied altars for sinning, they have become to him altars for sinning.

¹²Were I to write for him my laws by the ten thousands, they would be regarded as a strange thing.

¹³As for my sacrificial offerings, they sacrifice meat and eat it, but the LORD does not accept them. Now he will remember their iniquity and punish their sins; they shall return to Egypt.

¹⁴For Israel has forgotten his Maker and built palaces, and Judah has multiplied fortified cities; so I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour her strongholds.

¹Rejoice not, O Israel! Exult not like the peoples; for you have played the whore, forsaking your God. You have loved a prostitute's wages on all threshing floors.

²Threshing floor and wine vat shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail them.

³They shall not remain in the land of the LORD, but Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and they shall eat unclean food in Assyria.

⁴They shall not pour drink offerings of wine to the LORD, and their sacrifices shall not please him. It shall be like mourners' bread to them; all who eat of it shall be defiled; for their bread shall be for their hunger only; it shall not come to the house of the LORD.

⁵What will you do on the day of the appointed festival, and on the day of the feast of the LORD?

⁶For behold, they are going away from destruction; but Egypt shall gather them; Memphis shall bury them. Nettles shall possess their precious things of silver; thorns shall be in their tents.

⁷The days of punishment have come; the days of recompense have come; Israel shall know it. The prophet is a fool; the man of the spirit is mad, because of your great iniquity and great hatred.

⁸The prophet is the watchman of Ephraim with my God; yet a fowler's snare is on all his ways, and hatred in the house of his God.

⁹They have deeply corrupted themselves as in the days of Gibeah: he will remember their iniquity; he will punish their sins.

¹⁰Like grapes in the wilderness, I found Israel. Like the first fruit on the fig tree in its first season, I saw your fathers. But they came to Baal-peor and consecrated themselves to the thing of shame, and became detestable like the thing they loved.

¹¹Ephraim's glory shall fly away like a bird — no birth, no pregnancy, no conception!

¹²Even if they bring up children, I will bereave them till none is left. Woe to them when I depart from them!

¹³Ephraim, as I have seen, was like a young palm planted in a meadow; but Ephraim must lead his children out to slaughter.

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

¹⁵Every evil of theirs is in Gilgal; there I began to hate them. Because of the wickedness of their deeds I will drive them out of my house. I will love them no more; all their princes are rebels.

¹⁶Ephraim is stricken; their root is dried up; they shall bear no fruit. Even though they give birth, I will put their beloved children to death.

¹⁷My God will reject them because they have not listened to him; they shall be wanderers among the nations.