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Punishment for Israel’s Sin

Do not rejoice, O Israel!

Do not exult as other nations do;

for you have played the whore, departing from your God.

You have loved a prostitute’s pay

on all threshing floors.

Threshing floor and wine vat shall not feed them,

and the new wine shall fail them.

They shall not remain in the land of the L ord;

but Ephraim shall return to Egypt,

and in Assyria they shall eat unclean food.

They shall not pour drink offerings of wine to the L ord,

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 L ord.

What will you do on the day of appointed festival,

and on the day of the festival of the L ord?

For even if they escape destruction,

Egypt shall gather them,

Memphis shall bury them.

Nettles shall possess their precious things of silver;

thorns shall be in their tents.

The days of punishment have come,

the days of recompense have come;

Israel cries,

“The prophet is a fool,

the man of the spirit is mad!”

Because of your great iniquity,

your hostility is great.

The prophet is a sentinel for my God over Ephraim,

yet a fowler’s snare is on all his ways,

and hostility in the house of his God.

They have deeply corrupted themselves

as in the days of Gibeah;

he will remember their iniquity,

he will punish their sins.

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.

Ephraim’s glory shall fly away like a bird—

no birth, no pregnancy, no conception!

Even if they bring up children,

I will bereave them until no one is left.

Woe to them indeed

when I depart from them!

Once I saw Ephraim as a young palm planted in a lovely meadow,

but now Ephraim must lead out his children for slaughter.

Give them, O L ord—

what will you give?

Give them a miscarrying womb

and dry breasts.

Every evil of theirs began at Gilgal;

there I came to hate them.

Because of the wickedness of their deeds

I will drive them out of my house.

I will love them no more;

all their officials are rebels.

Ephraim is stricken,

their root is dried up,

they shall bear no fruit.

Even though they give birth,

I will kill the cherished offspring of their womb.

Because they have not listened to him,

my God will reject them;

they shall become wanderers among the nations.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The Prophet again threatens extreme vengeance to the Israelites. It is no wonder that the same sentence is so often repeated; for hypocrites, we know, too much flatter themselves, and are not frightened even by the most grievous threatening. As then hypocrites are so stupid, they must be often, nay, frequently pricked, and most sharply, that they may at length be awakened out of their torpor. Hence the Prophet repeats the threatening which he had often before announced, and says, that Israel had been so smitten, that their root had dried up The comparison is taken from a tree, which not only has had its branches cut off, but has also been torn from the roots. The meaning is, that God would take such vengeance on this miserable people, as wholly to destroy them, without any hope of recovery. The root then is dried up, they will produce fruit no more.

He then leaves this similitude or metaphor, and says, If they generate, I will slay the desirable fruit of their womb; that is, though some seed be begotten, I will yet destroy it.

We now then apprehend the design of the Prophet, which was to show, that the Lord would no more be content with some moderate punishment, for he had often found that this abandoned people were in vain chastised by paternal love; but that extreme vengeance awaited them, which would consume not only the men, but also their children so that no residue should remain. The reason is afterwards added —