4  Hear the word of the Lord, O children of Israel,

for ^wthe Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land.

There is no faithfulness or steadfast love,

and no ^xknowledge of God in the land;

2  there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery;

they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.

3  Therefore the land mourns,

and all who dwell in it languish,

and also the beasts of the field

and the birds of the heavens,

and even the ^yfish of the sea are taken away.

4  Yet let no one contend,

and let none accuse,

for with you is my contention, O ^zpriest.¹

5  You shall stumble by day;

the prophet also shall stumble with you by night;

and I will destroy ^ayour mother.

6  My people are destroyed ^bfor lack of knowledge;

because you have rejected knowledge,

I reject you from being a priest to me.

And since you have forgotten the law of your God,

I also will forget your children.

7  ^cThe more they increased,

the more they sinned against me;

I will change their glory into ^dshame.

8  They feed on the sin² of my people;

they are greedy for their iniquity.

9  ^eAnd it shall be like people, like priest;

I will punish them for their ways

and repay them for their deeds.

10  ^fThey shall eat, but not be satisfied;

they shall play the whore, but not multiply,

because they have forsaken the Lord

to cherish 11 whoredom, wine, and new wine,

which take away the understanding.

12  My people inquire of a piece of wood,

and their walking staff gives them oracles.

For a ^gspirit of whoredom has led them astray,

and they have left their God to play the whore.

13  They sacrifice ^hon the tops of the mountains

and burn offerings on the hills,

under oak, poplar, and terebinth,

because their shade is good.

Therefore your daughters play the whore,

and your brides commit adultery.

14  I will not punish your daughters when they play the whore,

nor your brides when they commit adultery;

for the men themselves go aside with prostitutes

and sacrifice with cult prostitutes,

and a people ⁱwithout understanding shall come to ruin.

15  Though you play the whore, O Israel,

let not Judah become guilty.

Enter not into ^jGilgal,

nor go up to ^kBeth-aven,

and swear not, “As the Lord lives.”

16  Like a stubborn heifer,

Israel is stubborn;

can the Lord now feed them

like a lamb in a broad pasture?

17  Ephraim is joined to idols;

leave him alone.

18  When their drink is gone, they give themselves to whoring;

their rulers³ dearly love shame.

19  A wind has wrapped them⁴ in its wings,

and they shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices.

5  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,

and sent to the ^ugreat king.⁴

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.

6  “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 love¹ 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,

7  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;¹

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;²

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.