Punishment Coming for Israel and Judah
1 Hear this, O lpriests!
Pay attention, O house of Israel!
Give ear, O house of the king!
For the judgment is for you;
for you have been a snare at Mizpah
and a net spread upon Tabor.
2 And the revolters have gone deep into slaughter,
but I will discipline all of them.
3 I know Ephraim,
and Israel is not hidden from me;
for now, O Ephraim, you have played the whore;
Israel is defiled.
4 Their deeds do not permit them
to return to their God.
For the mspirit of whoredom is within them,
and nthey know not the Lord.
5 oThe pride of Israel testifies to his face;1
Israel and Ephraim shall stumble in his guilt;
Judah also shall stumble with them.
6 With their flocks and herds they shall go
to seek the Lord,
pbut they will not find him;
he has withdrawn from them.
7 They have qdealt faithlessly with the Lord;
for they have borne alien children.
Now the new moon shall devour them with their fields.
8 rBlow the horn in Gibeah,
the trumpet in Ramah.
Sound the alarm at Beth-aven;
we follow you,2 O Benjamin!
9 Ephraim shall become a desolation
in the day of punishment;
among the tribes of Israel
I make known what is sure.
10 The princes of Judah have become
like those who smove the landmark;
upon them I will pour out
my wrath like water.
11 Ephraim is toppressed, crushed in judgment,
because he was determined to go after filth.3
12 But I am like a moth to Ephraim,
and like dry rot to the house of Judah.
13 When Ephraim saw his sickness,
and Judah his wound,
then Ephraim went to Assyria,
But he is not able to cure you
or heal your wound.
14 For I will be like a lion to Ephraim,
and like a young lion to the house of Judah.
I, even I, will tear and go away;
I will carry off, and no one shall rescue.
15 I will return again to my place,
until they acknowledge their guilt and vseek my face,
and in their distress wearnestly seek me.
Israel and Judah Are Unrepentant
1 “Come, xlet us return to the Lord;
for he has ytorn us, that he may heal us;
he has struck us down, and he will zbind us up.
2 After two days he will revive us;
aon the third day he will raise us up,
that we may live before him.
3 Let us know; let us press on to bknow the Lord;
his going out is sure as the dawn;
he will come to us as the showers,
as the spring rains that water the earth.”
4 cWhat shall I do with you, O Ephraim?
What shall I do with you, O Judah?
Your love is dlike a morning cloud,
like the dew that goes early away.
5 Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets;
I have slain them by the words of my mouth,
and my judgment goes forth as the light.
6 For eI desire steadfast love5 and not sacrifice,
the knowledge of God frather than burnt offerings.
7 But glike Adam they transgressed the covenant;
there they hdealt faithlessly with me.
8 iGilead is a city of evildoers,
tracked with blood.
9 As robbers lie in wait for a man,
so the jpriests band together;
they murder on the way to Shechem;
they commit villainy.
10 In the house of Israel I have seen a khorrible thing;
lEphraim’s whoredom is there; Israel is defiled.
11 For you also, O Judah, a mharvest is appointed.
When I nrestore the fortunes of my people,
1 when I would heal Israel,
the iniquity of Ephraim is revealed,
and the evil deeds of Samaria,
for they odeal falsely;
the thief breaks in,
and the bandits raid outside.
2 But they do not consider
that I premember all their evil.
Now their deeds surround them;
they are before my face.
3 By their evil they make the king glad,
and the princes by their treachery.
4 qThey are all adulterers;
they are like a heated oven
whose baker ceases to stir the fire,
from the kneading of the dough
until it is leavened.
5 On the day of our king, the princes
became sick with the heat of wine;
he stretched out his hand with mockers.
6 For with hearts like an oven they approach their intrigue;
all night their anger smolders;
in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.
7 All of them are hot as an oven,
and they devour their rulers.
All their kings have fallen,
and none of them calls upon me.
8 Ephraim mixes himself with the peoples;
Ephraim is a cake not turned.
9 Strangers devour his strength,
and he knows it not;
gray hairs are sprinkled upon him,
and he knows it not.
10 rThe pride of Israel testifies to his face;6
yet they do not return to the Lord their God,
nor seek him, for all this.
11 Ephraim is like a dove,
silly and without sense,
scalling to Egypt, going to Assyria.
12 As they go, I will spread over them my tnet;
I will bring them down like birds of the heavens;
I will udiscipline them according to the report made to their congregation.
13 vWoe to them, for they have strayed from me!
Destruction to them, for they have rebelled against me!
I would redeem them,
but they speak lies against me.
14 They do not cry to me from the heart,
but they wail upon their beds;
for grain and wine they wgash themselves;
they rebel against me.
15 Although I trained and strengthened their arms,
yet they xdevise evil against me.
16 They return, but not upward;7
they are ylike a treacherous bow;
their princes shall fall by the sword
because of the insolence of their tongue.
This shall be their derision zin the land of Egypt.
Israel Will Reap the Whirlwind
1 Set the trumpet to your lips!
One alike a vulture is over the house of the Lord,
because they have transgressed my covenant
and rebelled against my law.
2 To me they cry,
“My God, we—Israel—bknow you.”
3 Israel has spurned the good;
the enemy shall pursue him.
4 They made kings, but not through me.
They set up princes, but I knew it not.
With their silver and gold they made idols
for their own destruction.
5 I have8 spurned your ccalf, O Samaria.
My anger burns against them.
How long will they be incapable of innocence?
6 For it is from Israel;
a dcraftsman made it;
it is not God.
The calf of Samaria
shall be broken to pieces.9
7 For they sow the wind,
and they shall reap the whirlwind.
The standing grain has no heads;
it shall yield no flour;
if it were to yield,
strangers would devour it.
8 Israel is swallowed up;
already they are among the nations
eas a useless vessel.
9 For they have fgone up to Assyria,
a gwild donkey wandering alone;
Ephraim has hired hlovers.
10 Though they hire allies among the nations,
I will soon gather them up.
And the king and princes shall soon writhe
because of the tribute.
11 Because Ephraim has multiplied ialtars for sinning,
they have become to him altars for sinning.
12 Were I to write for him my laws by the ten thousands,
they would be regarded as a strange thing.
13 As for my sacrificial offerings,
they sacrifice meat and eat it,
but jthe Lord does not accept them.
Now he will kremember their iniquity
and punish their sins;
lthey shall return to Egypt.
14 For Israel has mforgotten his Maker
and built palaces,
and Judah has multiplied fortified cities;
so nI will send a fire upon his cities,
oand it shall devour her strongholds.
To the Church in Ephesus
1 “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: ‘The words of him who holds lthe seven stars in his right hand, mwho walks among the seven golden lampstands.
2 “‘I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. 3 I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and nyou have onot grown weary. 4 But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. 5 Remember therefore from where you have fallen; prepent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. 6 Yet this you have: you hate the works of the qNicolaitans, which I also hate. 7 rHe who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the stree of life, which is in the tparadise of God.’
To the Church in Smyrna
8 “And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: ‘The words of uthe first and the last, who vdied and came to life.
9 “‘I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are wrich) and the slander1 of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a xsynagogue of Satan. 10 Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the ydevil is about to throw some of you into zprison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have atribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the bcrown of life. 11 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers will not be hurt by cthe second death.’
To the Church in Pergamum
12 “And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write: ‘The words of him who has the sharp dtwo-edged sword.
13 “‘I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is. Yet you hold fast my name, and you did not deny my faith2 even in the days of Antipas my faithful witness, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells. 14 But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold ethe teaching of fBalaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to gidols and practice hsexual immorality. 15 So also you have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans. 16 Therefore repent. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them iwith the sword of my mouth. 17 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden jmanna, and I will give him a white stone, with a knew name written on the stone lthat no one knows except the one who receives it.’
To the Church in Thyatira
18 “And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write: ‘The words of the Son of God, mwho has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like nburnished bronze.
19 “‘I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first. 20 But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman oJezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. 21 I gave her time to repent, but she prefuses to repent of her sexual immorality. 22 Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and qthose who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works, 23 and I will strike her children dead. And all the churches will know that I am he who rsearches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works. 24 But to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan, to you I say, I do not lay on you any other burden. 25 Only shold fast what you have tuntil I come. 26 The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him uI will give vauthority over the nations, 27 and whe will rule3 them xwith a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received yauthority from my Father. 28 And I will give him the zmorning star. 29 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’
