Hosea 9

Tree of Life Version

⁶ Look, even if they escape the desolation,
Egypt will gather them up;
    Memphis will bury them.
And their precious silver treasures?
    Weeds will possess them.
Thorns will be in their tents.
⁷ The days of punishment have come;
the days of retribution have come.
Let Israel know! The prophet is a fool;
    the man of the spirit is mad!
For great is your iniquity
    and great the hostility.
⁸ Ephraim is a watchman with my God,
    a prophet.
A bird catcher’s trap is on all his paths.
Hostility is 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 sin.

¹⁰ “Like grapes in the wilderness
    I found Israel.
Like early fruit on a fig tree in its first season
    I saw your fathers.
They came to Baal-peor
    and devoted themselves to shame.
So they became as detestable
    as the thing they loved.
¹¹ Ephraim’s glory flies away like a bird—
no birth, no pregnancy, no conception!
¹² For if they should raise their children,
I would make them childless to the last man.
Yes, woe to them
    when I depart from them!
¹³ Ephraim, as I have seen,
is like Tyre, planted in a meadow,
but Ephraim will bring his children out to the slayer.”

¹⁴ Give them, Adonai, what will You give?
Give them a miscarrying womb
    and dried up breasts.

¹⁵ “All their wickedness is at Gilgal,
for there I despised them.
Because of their wicked practices,
    I will drive them out of My House.
I will love them no more.
All their princes are rebellious.
¹⁶ Ephraim is blighted;
their root is withered;
they bear no fruit.
Even if they bring forth children,
    I will slay the cherished ones in their wombs.”
¹⁷ My God will cast them off,
since they did not listen to Him.
So they will become wanderers among the nations.