For with hearts like an oven they approach their intrigue; all night their anger smolders; in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.
Ephraim mixes himself with the peoples; Ephraim is a cake not turned.
Ephraim is like a dove, silly and without sense, calling to Egypt, going to Assyria.
They return, but not upward; they are like a treacherous bow; their princes shall fall by the sword because of the insolence of their tongue. This shall be their derision in the land of Egypt.
Set the trumpet to your lips! One like a vulture is over the house of the Lord, because they have transgressed my covenant and rebelled against my law.
For it is from Israel; a craftsman made it; it is not God. The calf of Samaria shall be broken to pieces.
Israel is swallowed up; already they are among the nations as a useless vessel.
For they have gone up to Assyria, a wild donkey wandering alone; Ephraim has hired lovers.
Were I to write for him my laws by the ten thousands, they would be regarded as a strange thing.
For Israel has forgotten his Maker and built palaces, and Judah has multiplied fortified cities; so I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour her strongholds.
Rejoice not, O Israel! Exult not like the peoples; for you have played the whore, forsaking your God. You have loved a prostitute's wages on all threshing floors.
The days of punishment have come; the days of recompense have come; Israel shall know it. The prophet is a fool; the man of the spirit is mad, because of your great iniquity and great hatred.
The prophet is the watchman of Ephraim with my God; yet a fowler's snare is on all his ways, and hatred in the house of his God.
Ephraim's glory shall fly away like a bird— no birth, no pregnancy, no conception!
Ephraim, as I have seen, was like a young palm planted in a meadow; but Ephraim must lead his children out to slaughter.
Give them, O Lord— what will you give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts.
Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit. The more his fruit increased, the more altars he built; as his country improved, he improved his pillars.
For now they will say: “We have no king, for we do not fear the Lord; and a king—what could he do for us?”
Samaria's king shall perish like a twig on the face of the waters.
Ephraim was a trained calf that loved to thresh, and I spared her fair neck; but I will put Ephraim to the yoke; Judah must plow; Jacob must harrow for himself.
When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.
I will not execute my burning anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.
They shall go after the Lord; he will roar like a lion; when he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west;
Ephraim feeds on the wind and pursues the east wind all day long; they multiply falsehood and violence; they make a covenant with Assyria, and oil is carried to Egypt.
A merchant, in whose hands are false balances, he loves to oppress.
Jacob fled to the land of Aram; there Israel served for a wife, and for a wife he guarded sheep.
By a prophet the Lord brought Israel up from Egypt, and by a prophet he was guarded.
Therefore they shall be like the morning mist or like the dew that goes early away, like the chaff that swirls from the threshing floor or like smoke from a window.
So I am to them like a lion; like a leopard I will lurk beside the way.
I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs; I will tear open their breast, and there I will devour them like a lion, as a wild beast would rip them open.
Where now is your king, to save you in all your cities? Where are all your rulers— those of whom you said, “Give me a king and princes”?
I gave you a king in my anger, and I took him away in my wrath.
Hear this, you elders; give ear, all inhabitants of the land! Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers?
For a nation has come up against my land, powerful and beyond number; its teeth are lions' teeth, and it has the fangs of a lioness.
Lament like a virgin wearing sackcloth for the bridegroom of her youth.
Consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord.
Blow a trumpet in Zion; sound an alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming; it is near,
a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness there is spread upon the mountains a great and powerful people; their like has never been before, nor will be again after them through the years of all generations.
Fire devours before them, and behind them a flame burns. The land is like the garden of Eden before them, but behind them a desolate wilderness, and nothing escapes them.
As with the rumbling of chariots, they leap on the tops of the mountains, like the crackling of a flame of fire devouring the stubble, like a powerful army drawn up for battle.
They leap upon the city, they run upon the walls, they climb up into the houses, they enter through the windows like a thief.
Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God?
Blow the trumpet in Zion; consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly;
Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep and say, “Spare your people, O Lord, and make not your heritage a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”
The Lord answered and said to his people, “Behold, I am sending to you grain, wine, and oil, and you will be satisfied; and I will no more make you a reproach among the nations.
“I will remove the northerner far from you, and drive him into a parched and desolate land, his vanguard into the eastern sea, and his rear guard into the western sea; the stench and foul smell of him will rise, for he has done great things.
and have cast lots for my people, and have traded a boy for a prostitute, and have sold a girl for wine and have drunk it.
I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the people of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabeans, to a nation far away, for the Lord has spoken.”
Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weak say, “I am a warrior.”
The Lord roars from Zion, and utters his voice from Jerusalem, and the heavens and the earth quake. But the Lord is a refuge to his people, a stronghold to the people of Israel.
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