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9. Punishment for Israel

¹ Do not rejoice, Israel;
   do not be jubilant like the other nations.
For you have been unfaithful to your God;
   you love the wages of a prostitute
   at every threshing floor.
² Threshing floors and winepresses will not feed the people;
   the new wine will fail them.
³ They will not remain in the LORD’s land;
   Ephraim will return to Egypt
   and eat unclean food in Assyria.
⁴ They will not pour out wine offerings to the LORD,
   nor will their sacrifices please him.
Such sacrifices will be to them like the bread of mourners;
   all who eat them will be unclean.
This food will be for themselves;
   it will not come into the temple of the LORD.

    ⁵ What will you do on the day of your appointed festivals,
   on the feast days of the LORD?
⁶ Even if they escape from destruction,
   Egypt will gather them,
   and Memphis will bury them.
Their treasures of silver will be taken over by briers,
   and thorns will overrun their tents.
⁷ The days of punishment are coming,
   the days of reckoning are at hand.
   Let Israel know this.
Because your sins are so many
   and your hostility so great,
the prophet is considered a fool,
   the inspired person a maniac.
⁸ The prophet, along with my God,
   is the watchman over Ephraim, Or The prophet is the watchman over Ephraim, / the people of my God
yet snares await him on all his paths,
   and hostility in the house of his God.
⁹ They have sunk deep into corruption,
   as in the days of Gibeah.
God will remember their wickedness
   and punish them for their sins.

    ¹⁰ “When I found Israel,
   it was like finding grapes in the desert;
when I saw your ancestors,
   it was like seeing the early fruit on the fig tree.
But when they came to Baal Peor,
   they consecrated themselves to that shameful idol
   and became as vile as the thing they loved.
¹¹ Ephraim’s glory will fly away like a bird—
   no birth, no pregnancy, no conception.
¹² Even if they rear children,
   I will bereave them of every one.
Woe to them
   when I turn away from them!
¹³ I have seen Ephraim, like Tyre,
   planted in a pleasant place.
But Ephraim will bring out
   their children to the slayer.”

    ¹⁴ Give them, LORD—
   what will you give them?
Give them wombs that miscarry
   and breasts that are dry.

    ¹⁵ “Because of all their wickedness in Gilgal,
   I hated them there.
Because of their sinful deeds,
   I will drive them out of my house.
I will no longer love them;
   all their leaders are rebellious.
¹⁶ Ephraim is blighted,
   their root is withered,
   they yield no fruit.
Even if they bear children,
   I will slay their cherished offspring.”

    ¹⁷ My God will reject them
   because they have not obeyed him;
   they will be wanderers among the nations.

The Hebrews, we know, have often abrupt sentences as in this place, Ephraim! their glory has fled Ephraim is to be placed by itself; and the speech seems striking, when the Lord thus breaks off the sentence, Ephraim! he does not continue the sense, but immediately adds, Like a bird their glory has fled. When he speaks of Ephraim, he no doubt refers especially to his offspring; and by mentioning a part for the whole, he includes whatever was then deemed to be wealth, or glory, or power. The Prophet, I say, speaks of offspring, for he immediately adds, from the birth, and the womb, and the conception But they are mistaken who confine this sentence to offspring only; for it is, as I have said, a mode of speaking, by which a part is taken for the whole. According to the letter, he mentions children or offspring; but yet he includes generally the whole condition of the people.

Then as a bird the glory of Ephraim fled away In what respect? From the birth, from the womb, from the conception. The Prophet, no doubt, sets forth here the gradations of God’s vengeance, which was yet in part near at hand to the Israelites, and which was in part already evident by clear proofs. He says, from the birth, then from the womb, and, lastly, from the conception If, then, the glory of Ephraim had vanished at the beginning, the Prophet would not have thus spoken; but as the Lord showed signs of his wrath by degrees, that vengeance at length might reach the highest point, the Prophets in the first place, mentions birth, then the womb; as though he said, “The glory of Israel shall vanish from the birth, but if they still continue proud, and seem not subdued by this punishment, I will slay them in the womb itself; nay, in the conception, if they repent not; they shall be suffocated as in the very womb.”