Hosea 9:1-14

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

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.^(D)

⁵ What will you do on the day of appointed festival
    and on the day of the festival of the Lord?^(E)
6 For even if they escape destruction,
    Egypt shall gather them;
    Memphis shall bury them.
Nettles shall possess their precious things of silver;^[b]
    thorns shall be in their tents.^(F)

⁷ The days of punishment have come;
    the days of recompense have come.
Israel will cry out,^[c]
“The prophet is a fool;
    the man of the spirit is mad!”
Because of your great iniquity,
    your hostility is great.^(G)
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.^(H)
9 They have deeply corrupted themselves
    as in the days of Gibeah;
he will remember their iniquity;
    he will punish their sins.^(I)

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.^(J)
11 Ephraim’s glory shall fly away like a bird—
    no birth, no pregnancy, no conception!^(K)
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!^(L)
13 Once I saw Ephraim as a young palm planted in a lovely meadow,^[d]
    but now Ephraim must lead out his children for slaughter.^(M)
14 Give them, O Lord—
    what will you give?
Give them a miscarrying womb
    and dry breasts.