The judgment on the people of Israel
8
📚“Put the trumpet 📖 to your mouth!
The enemy is coming like
an eagle 📖 against the house
of the LORD,
because they have transgressed
my covenant 📖, and rebelled 📖 against my law.
2 📚Israel will cry out to me,
‘My God, we know you.’
8:2 Their cry would not be sincere and accompanied with repentance (Hos 5:6-7).⚜
3 📚Israel has rejected what is good 📖.
The enemy will pursue him.
4 📚They have set up kings,
📖 but not by me.
They have made princes,
but I did not acknowledge it.
With their silver and their gold
they have made idols for themselves,
with the result that
they will be cut off 📖.
5 📚Your calf, 📖 O Samaria,
is rejected. My anger 📖 burns
against them.
How long will it be before they
attain to innocence?
6 📚For this also is from Israel;
the workman 📖 made it,
therefore it is not God 📖.
That calf of Samaria will be
broken in pieces.
7 📚“For they have sown the wind,
and they will reap 📖 the whirlwind.
The stalk has no bud;
it will never produce meal.
Even if it did produce meal
foreigners 📖 would swallow it up.
8 📚Israel is swallowed up.
Now they will be among the Gentiles 📖
like a vessel in which
no one takes pleasure.
9 📚For they have gone up to Assyria,
a wild donkey alone by itself.
Ephraim has hired lovers.
10 📚Yes, though they hire them
among the nations,
now I will gather them,
and they will begin to diminish 📖
because of the burden
of the king of princes.
8:10 They were willing to pay anyone who would promise to help them.⚜
11 📚“Because Ephraim has made
many altars for sin,
they have become for him altars
for sinning.
8:11 They built altars to false gods, not to the one true God, so all their worship at those places was in defiance of God, and sinful.⚜
12 📚I wrote 📖 for him the great things
of my law,
but they were considered
something alien 📖.
13 📚They sacrifice flesh as the sacrifices
for my offerings,
and eat it;
but the LORD does not
accept them.
Now he will remember 📖
their wickedness,
and punish their sins.
They will return to Egypt 📖.
8:13 Verse 2. Even when they offered sacrifices to God rather than to idols, they were lacking in sincerity and their worship was not acceptable. Compare Isa 1:11-17.⚜
14 📚For Israel has forgotten 📖 his Maker,
📖 and built temples 📖;
and Judah has multiplied
fortified cities.
But I will send a fire on his cities,
and it will devour its palaces”.