I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus; You have chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke: restore me, and I shall return; for you are the LORD my God.
Be you not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, else they come not near unto you.
Your sons have fainted, they lie at the head of all the streets, as an antelope in a net: they are full of the fury of the LORD, the rebuke of your God.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.
Doubtless you are our father, though Abraham is ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledges us not: you, O LORD, are our father, our redeemer; your name is from everlasting.
We lie down in our shame, and our disgrace covers us: for we have sinned against the LORD our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even unto this day, and have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God.
They shall come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them: I will cause them to walk by the rivers of waters in a straight way, in which they shall not stumble: for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.
O LORD, are not your eyes upon the truth? you have stricken them, but they have not grieved; you have consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder than a rock; they have refused to return.
And there shall you remember your ways, and all your doings, in which you have been defiled; and you shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for all your evils that you have committed.
As it is written in the law of Moses, all this evil has come upon us: yet made we not our prayer before the LORD our God, that we might turn from our iniquities, and understand your truth.
And Ephraim is as a heifer that is trained, and loves to tread out the grain; but I harnessed her fair neck: I will make Ephraim to pull a plow; Judah shall plow, and Jacob must break his clods.
And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented of the disaster, that he had said that he would bring upon them; and he did it not.
Then they that feared the LORD spoke often one to another: and the LORD hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon his name.
And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.
On the west side shall be the standard of the camp of Ephraim according to their armies: and the captain of the sons of Ephraim shall be Elishama the son of Ammihud.
And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.
And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.
And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks unto you as unto children, My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are rebuked of him: