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Punishment for Israel’s Sin

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.
² Threshing-floor and wine vat shall not feed them,
   and the new wine shall fail them.
³ They shall not remain in the land of the Lord;
   but Ephraim shall return to Egypt,
   and in Assyria they shall eat unclean food.

⁴ They 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.

⁵ What will you do on the day of appointed festival,
   and on the day of the festival of the Lord?
⁶ For 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.

⁷ The 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.
⁸ The 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.
⁹ They have deeply corrupted themselves
   as in the days of Gibeah;
he will remember their iniquity,
   he will punish their sins.