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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.

He then adds, Though they shall bring up children, I will yet exterminate them, so that they shall not be men, or, before they grow up, as some expound the words. The meaning is, that though Ephraim then flattered himself, yet a dreadful ruin was at hand, which would extinguish the whole seed, so that there would be nothing remaining. But lest they should think that all was over, when the Lord had inflicted on them one punishment, he lays down three gradations; that God would slay them first in the birth, then extinguish them in the womb, and, lastly, before conception; but if he spared them, so that they would raise up children, it would yet be without advantage, inasmuch as God would take away the youths in the flower of their age. Thus, then he threatens entire destruction to the kingdom of Israel.

And, lastly, he closes the verse in these words, And surely woe will be to them when I shall depart from them The Prophet means by these words, that men become miserable and accursed, when they alienate themselves from God, and when God takes away from them his favour. After having mentioned especially the vengeance of Godwhich was at hand, he says here that the cause and occasion of all evils would be, that God would depart from them, inasmuch as they had previously renounced their faith in him. But we must bear in mind the reason why the Prophet added this clause, and that is, because wicked men dream, that though God be displeased, things will yet go on prosperously with them: for they neither ascribe adversities to the wrath of God, nor acknowledge the fountain of all blessings to be God’s free and paternal favour. As then profane men do not understand this truth, however much God may proclaim that he is an enemy to them, that he is armed to destroy them, they care nothing, but promise to themselves a prosperous fortune: until they feel the hand of God and the signs of destruction appear, they continue still secure. This is the reason why the Prophet says, that there is woe to men when God departs from them. Forasmuch, then, as Scripture teaches everywhere that every desirable thing comes and flows to us from the mere grace of God and his paternal favour, so the Prophet declares in this place, that men are miserable and accursed when God is angry with them. But it follows —