You call wood your father. You call stone your mother. You’ve turned your backs, not your faces, to me. But when you’re in trouble, you ask me to come and rescue you.
Egypt’s hired soldiers are like fattened calves. They will turn and run away together. They won’t stand their ground. The day of destruction is coming. At that time they will be punished.
The people of Ephraim have become important among their relatives. However, the Lord’s scorching wind will come from the east. It will blow out of the desert. Then their springs will run dry, and their wells will dry up. The wind will destroy every precious thing in their storehouses.
The Lord will let your enemies defeat you. You will attack them from one direction but run away from them in seven directions. You will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms in the world.
Then the Lord will scatter you among all the people of the world, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will serve gods made of wood and stone that neither you nor your ancestors ever knew.
On that day I will become angry with them. I will abandon them and turn away from them. They will be destroyed, and many terrible disasters will happen to them. On that day they will ask, ‘Haven’t these disasters happened to us because our God isn’t with us?’