Hosea 9

Revised Geneva Translation

9 Do not rejoice for joy, O Israel, as other people. For you have gone a whoring from your God. You have loved a reward upon every grain floor.

² The floor and the winepress shall not feed them. And the new wine shall fail in her.

³ They will not dwell in the LORD’s land. But Ephraim will return to Egypt. And they will eat unclean things in Assyria.

⁴ They shall not offer wine to the LORD. Nor shall their sacrifices be pleasant to Him. But they shall be as the bread of mourners. All who eat of it shall be polluted. For their bread for their souls shall not come into the House of the LORD.

⁵ What will you do, then, on the solemn day, and on the day of the Feast of the LORD?

⁶ For lo, they have gone from destruction. Egypt shall gather them up and Memphis shall bury them. Nettles shall possess the pleasant places of their silver. Thorns shall be in their tabernacles.

⁷ The days of visitation have come. The days of recompense have come. Israel shall know it. The Prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad, because of the multitude of your iniquity. Therefore the hatred is great.

⁸ The watchman of Ephraim is with my God. The Prophet is the snare of a bird catcher in all his ways, and hatred is in the House of his God.

⁹ They are deeply set. They are corrupt, as in the days of Gibeah. He will remember their iniquity. He will visit their sins.

¹⁰ “I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness. I saw your fathers as the firstfruits of a fig tree in her first season. But they went to Baal Peor and separated themselves to that shame. And abominations were according to their lovers.

¹¹ “Ephraim, their glory, shall flee away like a bird, from the birth and from the womb and from the conception.

¹² “Though they bring up their children, I will deprive them of being men. Yea, woe to them when I depart from them!

¹³ “Ephraim, as I saw, is as a tree in Tyre, planted in a cottage. But Ephraim shall bring forth his children to the murderer.”

¹⁴ O LORD, give them—what will You give them? Give them a barren womb and dry breasts.

¹⁵ “All their wickedness is in Gilgal. For there I hated them for the wickedness of their inventions. I will cast them out of My House. I will love them no longer. All their princes are rebels.

¹⁶ “Ephraim is stricken! Their root is dried up! They can bring no fruit! Yea, though they bring forth, I will kill even the dearest of their body.”

¹⁷ My God will cast them away because they did not obey Him. And they shall wander among the nations.