“I have clearly heard Ephrayim lamenting, ‘You have chastised me, and I was chastised, like an untrained calf. Turn me back, and I shall turn back, for You are יהוה my Elohim.
Your sons have fainted, they lie at the head of all the streets, like a gazelle in a net. They are filled with the wrath of יהוה, the rebuke of your Elohim.
He was oppressed and He was afflicted, but He did not open His mouth. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, but He did not open His mouth.
For You are our Father, though Aḇraham does not know us, and Yisra’ĕl does not recognise us. You, O יהוה, are our Father, our Redeemer – Your Name is from of old.
“We shall lie down in our shame, while our reproach covers us. For we have sinned against יהוה our Elohim, we and our fathers, from our youth even to this day, and have not obeyed the voice of יהוה our Elohim.”
“With weeping they shall come, and with their prayers I bring them. I shall make them walk by rivers of waters, in a straight way in which they do not stumble. For I shall be a Father to Yisra’ĕl, and Ephrayim – he is My first-born.
O יהוה, are Your eyes not on truth? You have stricken them, but they have not grieved. You have consumed them, but they have refused to receive instruction. They made their faces stronger than rock, they refused to turn back.
“And there you shall remember your ways and all your deeds with which you were defiled. And you shall loathe yourselves in your own sight because of all the evils that you did.
“As it is written in the Torah of Mosheh, all this evil has come upon us, and we have not entreated the face of יהוה our Elohim, to turn back from our crookednesses, and to study Your truth.
“And Ephrayim is a trained heifer, loving to thresh grain. But I Myself shall pass over her comely neck – I put Ephrayim to the yoke, Yehuḏah ploughs, Ya‛aqoḇ harrows for him.”
And Elohim saw their works, that they turned from their evil way. And Elohim relented from the evil which He had said He would do to them, and He did not do it.
Then shall those who fear יהוה speak to one another, and יהוה listens and hears, and a book of remembrance be written before Him, of those who fear יהוה, and those who think upon His Name.
“And he shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with utter destruction.”
On the west side: the banner of the camp of Ephrayim according to their divisions, and the leader of the children of Ephrayim: Elishama, son of Ammihuḏ.
“And he shall go before Him in the spirit and power of Ěliyahu, ‘to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,’ and the disobedient to the insight of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for יהוה.”
“And having risen, he went to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.
And you have forgotten the appeal which speaks to you as to sons, “My son, do not despise the discipline of יהוה, nor faint when you are reproved by Him,