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13When Ephraim spoke, there was trembling; he was exalted in Israel; but he incurred guilt through Baal and died. ²And now they keep on sinning and make a cast image for themselves, idols of silver made according to their understanding, all of them the work of artisans. “Sacrifice to these,” they say. People are kissing calves! ³Therefore they shall be like the morning mist or like the dew that goes away early, like chaff that swirls from the threshing floor or like smoke from a window. ⁴Yet I have been the Lord your God ever since the land of Egypt; you know no God but me, and besides me there is no savior.

⁵It was I who fed you in the wilderness, in the land of drought. ⁶When I fed them, they were satisfied; they were satisfied, and their heart was proud; therefore they forgot me. ⁷So I will become like a lion to them, like a leopard I will lurk beside the way. ⁸I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs, and will tear open the covering of their heart; there I will devour them like a lion, as a wild animal would mangle them.

⁹I will destroy you, O Israel; who can help you? ¹⁰Where now is your king, that he may save you? Where in all your cities are your rulers, of whom you said, “Give me a king and rulers”? ¹¹I gave you a king in my anger, and I took him away in my wrath. ¹²Ephraim’s iniquity is bound up; his sin is kept in store. ¹³The pangs of childbirth come for him, but he is an unwise son; for at the proper time he does not present himself at the mouth of the womb. ¹⁴Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from Death? O Death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your destruction? Compassion is hidden from my eyes. ¹⁵Although he may flourish among rushes, the east wind shall come, a blast from the Lord, rising from the wilderness; and his fountain shall dry up, his spring shall be parched. It shall strip his treasury of every precious thing. ¹⁶Samaria shall bear her guilt, because she has rebelled against her God; they shall fall by the sword, their little ones shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open.