⁴ You are my King, my God!
    You ordained victories for Jacob and his people!
⁵ You are our victory, pushing back the enemy;
    at the sound of Your name, we crush the opposition.
⁶ I don’t trust in my weapons
    or in my strength to win me victory.
⁷ But You rescue us from our foes;
    You shame our enemies.
⁸ We shout Your name all day long;
    we will praise Your name forever!

[pause]^[b]

⁹ But wait, God, where have You gone? Why have You shamed us?
    Why do our armies stand alone?
¹⁰ Without Your help we must retreat from our enemy,
    and the very ones who despise us pillage us.
¹¹ You have offered us up to our enemies,
    like sheep to the slaughter, meat for their feast,
    and You have dispersed us among the nations.
¹² You sold Your people for mere pennies,
    and You gained nothing from the deal.

¹³ You have made us a joke to our friends and neighbors,
    mocked and ridiculed by all those around us.
¹⁴ You have brought us infamy among the nations
    and made us an object of scorn and laughter to our neighbors.
¹⁵ Disgrace follows me everywhere I go; I am constantly embarrassed.
    Shame is written across my face
¹⁶ Because of the taunting and berating of those who are against me,
    because the enemy seeks revenge against me.

¹⁷ All this has happened to us,
    yet we have never forgotten You;
    we have not broken Your covenant with us.
¹⁸ Our hearts stayed true to You;
    we have never left Your path;
    we follow on.
¹⁹ Yet You have tested us, left us defeated in a land of jackals,
    and shrouded us with the veil of death.

²⁰ Even if we had forgotten the name of our God
    or offered praise to another god,
²¹ Would not the True God have known it?
    For He can see the hidden places of our hearts.
²² On Your behalf, our lives are endangered constantly;
    we are like sheep awaiting slaughter.^[c]

²³ Wake up, Lord! Why do You slumber?
    Get up! Do not reject us any longer!
²⁴ Why are You still hiding from us?
    Why are You still ignoring our suffering and trouble?
²⁵ Look and You will see our souls now dwell in the dust;
    our bodies hug the earth.
²⁶ Rise up and help us;
    restore us for the sake of Your boundless love.

6 Come on, let’s renew our loyalty to the Eternal One!
He tore us like a lion, but He’ll heal us;
    He wounded us, but He’ll bandage us.
² He’ll bring us back to life after two days;
    He’ll raise us up on the third day, and we’ll live with Him.

³ So let’s know Him; let’s strive to know the Eternal.
    As surely as the sun rises, He’ll come out from His lair.
As surely as the rains come each year—
    those spring rains that drench the earth—He’ll come back to us.

⁴ Eternal One: What am I supposed to do with you, Ephraim?
        What am I supposed to do with you, Judah?
    Your loyalty to Me is like fog in the morning,
        like dew that evaporates at sunrise.
⁵     This is why I cut them with the words of the prophets
        and destroyed them with the words of My mouth.
        My judgment went forth like the light of the rising sun.
⁶     For I want not animal sacrifices, but mercy.^[a]
        I don’t want burnt offerings; I want people to know Me as God!
⁷     They broke their covenant with Me, treated it as just a common human affair;
        they were unfaithful to Me there.
⁸     The city of Gilead is full of evil, murderous people.
        Their footprints are bloody.

⁹     As the priests travel together down the road,
        they’re like a band of robbers setting an ambush.
    They are like their ancestor Levi who committed murder at Shechem,^[b]
        deceiving the people by their treachery.
¹⁰     I’ve seen a horrible thing in the house of Israel:
        Ephraim engages in prostitution there by worshiping at other shrines.
    Israel pollutes itself through violence and idol worship.

Look what I am going to do in Zion.
I’ll put in place a stone that makes them stumble, a rock that trips them up,
    and those who trust in it will not be disgraced.^[a]