Dual Panel1Do not rejoice, Israel, or exult like other peoples; for you have been unfaithful to your God, you have been attracted by a prostitute's fee on every threshing-floor heaped with grain.
2Threshing-floor and winepress will see them no more, there will be no new wine for them.
3They will not dwell in the LORD's land: Ephraim will go back to Egypt, or eat unclean food in Assyria.
4They are not to pour out wine to the LORD; their sacrifices will not be pleasing to him; it would be like mourners' fare for them, and all who ate it would be polluted. Their food must serve only to stay their hunger; it must not be offered in the house of the LORD.
5What will you do on the festal day, the day of the LORD's pilgrim-feast?
6For look, the people have fled from a scene of devastation: Egypt will receive them, Memphis will be their grave. Weeds will engulf their silver treasures, and thorns their dwellings.
7The days of punishment have come, the days of vengeance are here and Israel knows it. The prophet has become a fool, the inspired seer a madman, because of your great guilt and enmity.
8God appointed the prophet as a watchman for Ephraim, but he has become a fowler's trap on all their ways. There is enmity in the very temple of God.
9They are deep in sin as at the time of Gibeah. Their guilt will be remembered and their sins punished.
10I came upon Israel like grapes in the wilderness; as at the first ripe figs I looked on their forefathers with joy, but they resorted to Baal-peor and consecrated themselves to a thing of shame. Ephraim became as loathsome as the thing they loved.
11Their honour will fly away like a bird: no childbirth, no fruitful womb, no conceiving!
12Even if they rear their children, I will make them childless, without posterity. Woe betide them when I turn away from them!
13As lions lead out their cubs, just to be hunted, so must Ephraim bring out his children for slaughter.
14Give them whatever you, LORD, are going to give. Give them wombs that miscarry and dry breasts.
15All their wickedness at Gilgal aroused my hatred. I shall drive them from my house because of their evil deeds, I shall love them no more, for all their rulers are in revolt.
16Ephraim is struck down: their root is withered, and they yield no fruit; if ever they give birth, I shall slay the cherished offspring of their womb.
17My God will reject them, because they have not listened to him, and they will become wanderers among the nations.