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¹⁹And I will take you for my wife forever; I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. ²⁰I will take you for my wife in faithfulness; and you shall know the Lord. ²¹On that day I will answer, says the Lord, I will answer the heavens and they shall answer the earth; ²²and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil, and they shall answer Jezreel; ²³and I will sow him for myself in the land. And I will have pity on Lo-ruhamah, and I will say to Lo-ammi, “You are my people”; and he shall say, “You are my God.”

3The Lord said to me again, “Go, love a woman who has a lover and is an adulteress, just as the Lord loves the people of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes.” ²So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer of barley and a measure of wine. ³And I said to her, “You must remain as mine for many days; you shall not play the whore, you shall not have intercourse with a man, nor I with you.” ⁴For the Israelites shall remain many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or teraphim. ⁵Afterward the Israelites shall return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king; they shall come in awe to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days.

4Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel; for the Lord has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land. ²Swearing, lying, and murder, and stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed. ³Therefore the land mourns, and all who live in it languish; together with the wild animals and the birds of the air, even the fish of the sea are perishing. ⁴Yet let no one contend, and let none accuse, for with you is my contention, O priest. ⁵You shall stumble by day; the prophet also shall stumble with you by night, and I will destroy your mother.

⁶My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. ⁷The more they increased, the more they sinned against me; they changed their glory into shame. ⁸They feed on the sin of my people; they are greedy for their iniquity. ⁹And it shall be like people, like priest; I will punish them for their ways, and repay them for their deeds. ¹⁰They shall eat, but not be satisfied; they shall play the whore, but not multiply; because they have forsaken the Lord to devote themselves to ¹¹whoredom. Wine and new wine take away the understanding.

¹²My people consult a piece of wood, and their divining rod gives them oracles. For a spirit of whoredom has led them astray, and they have played the whore, forsaking their God. ¹³They sacrifice on the tops of the mountains, and make offerings upon the hills, under oak, poplar, and terebinth, because their shade is good. Therefore your daughters play the whore, and your daughters-in-law commit adultery. ¹⁴I will not punish your daughters when they play the whore, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery; for the men themselves go aside with whores, and sacrifice with temple prostitutes; thus a people without understanding comes to ruin. ¹⁵Though you play the whore, O Israel, do not let Judah become guilty. Do not enter into Gilgal, or go up to Beth-aven, and do not swear, “As the Lord lives.” ¹⁶Like a stubborn heifer, Israel is stubborn; can the Lord now feed them like a lamb in a broad pasture? ¹⁷Ephraim is joined to idols— let him alone. ¹⁸When their drinking is ended, they indulge in sexual orgies; they love lewdness more than their glory. ¹⁹A wind has wrapped them in its wings, and they shall be ashamed because of their altars.

5Hear this, O priests! Give heed, O house of Israel! Listen, O house of the king! For the judgment pertains to you; for you have been a snare at Mizpah, and a net spread upon Tabor, ²and a pit dug deep in Shittim; but I will punish 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 do not know the Lord. ⁵Israel’s pride testifies against him; Ephraim stumbles in his guilt; Judah also stumbles 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 illegitimate children. Now the new moon shall devour them along with their fields.

⁸Blow the horn in Gibeah, the trumpet in Ramah. Sound the alarm at Beth-aven; look behind you, Benjamin! ⁹Ephraim shall become a desolation in the day of punishment; among the tribes of Israel I declare what is sure. ¹⁰The princes of Judah have become like those who remove the landmark; on them I will pour out my wrath like water. ¹¹Ephraim is oppressed, crushed in judgment, because he was determined to go after vanity. ¹²Therefore I am like maggots to Ephraim, and like rottenness 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 myself 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. In their distress they will beg my favor:

6“Come, let us return to the Lord; for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us; he has struck 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 appearing is as sure as the dawn; he will come to us like the showers, like 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 away early. ⁵Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets, I have killed 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 at 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 someone, so the priests are banded together; they murder on the road to Shechem, they commit a monstrous crime. 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 would restore the fortunes of my people,

7when I would heal Israel, the corruption of Ephraim is revealed, and the wicked 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 wickedness. Now their deeds surround them, they are before my face. ³By their wickedness they make the king glad, and the officials by their treachery. ⁴They are all adulterers; they are like a heated oven, whose baker does not need to stir the fire, from the kneading of the dough until it is leavened. ⁵On the day of our king the officials became sick with the heat of wine; he stretched out his hand with mockers. ⁶For they are kindled like an oven, their heart burns within them; 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; none of them calls upon me.

⁸Ephraim mixes himself with the peoples; Ephraim is a cake not turned. ⁹Foreigners devour his strength, but he does not know it; gray hairs are sprinkled upon him, but he does not know it. ¹⁰Israel’s pride testifies against him; yet they do not return to the Lord their God, or seek him, for all this. ¹¹Ephraim has become like a dove, silly and without sense; they call upon Egypt, they go to Assyria. ¹²As they go, I will cast my net over them; I will bring them down like birds of the air; I will discipline them according to the report made to their assembly. 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; they gash themselves for grain and wine; they rebel against me. ¹⁵It was I who trained and strengthened their arms, yet they plot evil against me. ¹⁶They turn to that which does not profit; they have become like a defective bow; their officials shall fall by the sword because of the rage of their tongue. So much for their babbling in the land of Egypt.

8Set the trumpet to your lips! One like a vulture is over the house of the Lord, because they have broken my covenant, and transgressed my law. ²Israel cries to me, “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 without my knowledge. With their silver and gold they made idols for their own destruction. ⁵Your calf is rejected, O Samaria. My anger burns against them. How long will they be incapable of innocence? ⁶For it is from Israel, an artisan 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 meal; if it were to yield, foreigners would devour it.

⁸Israel is swallowed up; now they are among the nations as a useless vessel. ⁹For they have gone up to Assyria, a wild ass wandering alone; Ephraim has bargained for lovers. ¹⁰Though they bargain with the nations, I will now gather them up. They shall soon writhe under the burden of kings and princes. ¹¹When Ephraim multiplied altars to expiate sin, they became to him altars for sinning. ¹²Though I write for him the multitude of my instructions, they are regarded as a strange thing. ¹³Though they offer choice sacrifices, though they eat flesh, the Lord does not accept them. Now he will remember their iniquity, and punish their sins; they shall return to Egypt. ¹⁴Israel has forgotten his Maker, and built palaces; and Judah has multiplied fortified cities; but I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour his strongholds.

9Do not rejoice, O Israel! Do not exult as other nations do; for you have played the whore, departing from your God. You have loved a prostitute’s pay 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 in Assyria they shall eat unclean food. ⁴They shall not pour drink offerings of wine to the Lord, and their sacrifices shall not please him. Such sacrifices shall be like mourners’ bread; 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 appointed festival, and on the day of the festival of the Lord? ⁶For even if they escape destruction, 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 cries, “The prophet is a fool, the man of the spirit is mad!” Because of your great iniquity, your hostility is great. ⁸The prophet is a sentinel for my God over Ephraim, yet a fowler’s snare is on all his ways, and hostility 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 ancestors. But they came to Baal-peor, and consecrated themselves to a 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 until no one is left. Woe to them indeed when I depart from them! ¹³Once I saw Ephraim as a young palm planted in a lovely meadow, but now Ephraim must lead out his children for slaughter.