Hosea 9 - New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition 2021

Hosea 9 Punishment for Israel’s Sin

¹ Do not rejoice, O Israel! Do not exult as other nations do, for you have prostituted yourself, departing from your God. You have loved a prostitute’s pay on all threshing floors.

² Threshing floor and wine vat shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail them.

³ They shall not remain in the land of the Lord, but Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and in Assyria they shall eat unclean food.

⁴ They shall not pour drink offerings of wine to the Lord, and their sacrifices shall not please him. Such sacrifices shall be like mourners’ bread; all who eat of it shall be defiled, for their bread shall be for their hunger only; it shall not come to the house of the Lord.

⁵ What will you do on the day of appointed festival and on the day of the festival of the Lord?

⁶ For even if they escape destruction, Egypt shall gather them; Memphis shall bury them. Nettles shall possess their precious things of silver; thorns shall be in their tents.

⁷ The days of punishment have come; the days of recompense have come. Israel will cry out, “The prophet is a fool; the man of the spirit is mad!” Because of your great iniquity, your hostility is great.

⁸ The prophet is a sentinel for my God over Ephraim, yet a hunter’s snare is on all his ways and hostility in the house of his God.

⁹ They have deeply corrupted themselves as in the days of Gibeah; he will remember their iniquity; he will punish their sins.

¹⁰ Like grapes in the wilderness, I found Israel. Like the first fruit on the fig tree, in its first season, I saw your ancestors. But they came to Baal-peor and consecrated themselves to a thing of shame and became detestable like the thing they loved.

¹¹ Ephraim’s glory shall fly away like a bird— no birth, no pregnancy, no conception!

¹² Even if they bring up children, I will bereave them until no one is left. Woe to them indeed when I depart from them!

¹³ Once I saw Ephraim as a young palm planted in a lovely meadow, but now Ephraim must lead out his children for slaughter.

¹⁴ Give them, O Lord— what will you give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts.

¹⁵ Every evil of theirs began at Gilgal; there I came to hate them. Because of the wickedness of their deeds I will drive them out of my house. I will love them no more; all their officials are rebels.

¹⁶ Ephraim is stricken, their root is dried up, they shall bear no fruit. Even though they give birth, I will kill the cherished offspring of their womb.

¹⁷ Because they have not listened to him, my God will reject them; they shall become wanderers among the nations.