Captivity and exile
9
📚Do not rejoice, 📖 O Israel,with joy like other people,
for you have gone away
from your God and engaged
in prostitution 📖.
You have loved a prostitute’s
pay at every threshing floor.
2 📚The threshing floor
and the winepress will not
feed them,
and the new wine will fail her.
3 📚They will not live
in the LORD’s land,
but Ephraim will return to Egypt,
📖 and they will eat unclean 📖 things
in Assyria 📖.
9:3 The land of Israel is “the LORD’s land”. He will choose who should live there and who not.⚜
4 📚They will not offer wine
offerings to the LORD,
nor will they be pleasing to him.
Their sacrifices will be for them
like the bread of mourners.
All who eat it will be defiled 📖;
for their bread will be
for their lives.
It will not come into the house 📖
of the LORD.
5 📚What will you do
on the appointed day,
and on the day of the feast
of the LORD?
6 📚For, see, they are going
because of destruction.
Egypt 📖 will gather them up,
Memphis will bury them.
Nettles will possess their treasures
of silver,
thorns 📖 will be in their tents.
7 📚The days of punishment are coming,
the days of retribution are coming.
Let Israel know.
The prophet is considered
a fool,
the inspired man 📖 insane,
because of your many evil deeds,
and great hostility 📖.
8 📚The watchman 📖 of Ephraim 📖
is with my God,
a prophet; yet a bird catcher’s
snare is in all his ways,
and hostility in the house
of his God.
9 📚They have deeply corrupted
themselves,
as in the days of Gibeah 📖.
Therefore he will remember 📖
their iniquity,
he will punish 📖 their sins.
10 📚“I found Israel 📖 like grapes
in the wilderness.
I saw your fathers as the firstfruit
of the fig tree in its first season.
But they went to Baal-Peor 📖,
and dedicated themselves to
that shameful thing,
and they became as abominable as
what they loved.
11 📚As for Ephraim,
their glory will fly away like a bird,
without birth,
without pregnancy,
and without conception.
9:11 Israel would decrease in numbers and power and prosperity.⚜
12 📚Though they bring up
their children,
yet I will bereave them until
no man is left;
yes, and woe to them when
I depart from them 📖!
13 📚I have seen Ephraim, like Tyre,
📖 planted in a pleasant place.
But Ephraim will bring out his children
to the murderer 📖”.
14 📚Give them, O LORD;
what will you give?
Give them a miscarrying womb
and dry breasts.
9:14 God has been speaking. Now Hosea speaks. Note on such prayers at Ps 35:8.⚜
15 📚“All their wickedness appeared
in Gilgal 📖;
so I hated them 📖 there.
Because of the evil of their deeds
I will drive them out of my house.
I will love them no more 📖.
All their princes are rebels.
9:15 God speaks again.⚜
16 📚Ephraim is stricken;
their root is dried up.
They will bear no fruit 📖.
Yes, even though they bear children,
I will slay the loved ones
of their womb”.
17 📚My God will reject 📖 them
because they did not listen
to him,
and they will become wanderers 📖
among the nations.
9:17 Again Hosea speaks.⚜