Hosea 9

International Standard Version

⁵ “What will you do on the designated holiday,
    when the Lord’s festival comes?
⁶ Look! They have gone away because of the destruction—
    Egypt will gather them up,
        and Memphis^[a] will bury them.
Weeds will overgrow their inheritance,^[b]
    and thorns will grow^[c] in their tents.
⁷ The time for your judgment has now come;
    payday is here—
        and Israel knows it.
The prophet is a fool,
    and the spiritual man is insane.
Because of your great sin,
    the hatred against you^[d] is great.
⁸ While Ephraim stands watch with my God,
    the prophet has snares set that will trap his ways,
        and hostility lodges in the Temple of his God.
⁹ They have corrupted themselves deeply,
    as did Gibeah^[e] in its day.
Therefore God^[f] will remember their lawlessness,
    and he will pay them back for their sins.

¹⁰ “I found Israel,
    as one finds^[g] grapes in the wilderness;
Your ancestors seemed to me like the fruit
    gleaned from a fig tree’s first harvest.
When they went to Baal-peor,^[h]
    they devoted themselves to that filth,
and they became loathsome,
    like what they loved.
¹¹ The glory of Ephraim will fly away like a bird—
    no birth, no pregnancy, not even a conception.
¹² Even if they rear their children,
    I will, in turn, make them childless—
in fact, woe to them
    when I turn away from them!
¹³ Ephraim, as I see it, is like Tyre,
    planted in a comfortable place;
Ephraim will bear children
    but they will be executed.”

¹⁴ Give them, Lord—
    What will you give?
        You will give them a womb that miscarries and dry breasts.

¹⁵ “All of their wickedness started^[i] in Gilgal,
    because I began to hate them there.
Because of the wickedness of their behavior,
    I will drive them from my Temple.
I will not love them anymore;
    all their leaders are rebels.
¹⁶ Ephraim is blighted;^[j]
    its roots shriveled.
        It can bear no fruit.
Even if they bear children,
    I will kill their cherished offspring.

¹⁷ “My God will reject them,
    because they did not obey him,
        and they will become wanderers among the nations.”