English / ERV
Hosea 9
Easy-to-Read Version, 2006
- 1Israel, don’t celebrate like the nations do. Don’t be happy. You acted like a prostitute and left your God. You committed your sexual sin[1] on every threshing floor.
- 2But the grain from those threshing floors will not provide enough food for Israel. There will not be enough wine for Israel.
- 3The Israelites will not stay in the LORD’s land. Ephraim will return to Egypt. In Assyria they will eat food that they should not eat.
- 4They will not be able to give offerings of wine to the LORD. None of their sacrifices will please him. What they offer will be like food eaten at a funeral—whoever eats it will become unclean. They can eat that food for their own hunger, but it cannot be taken into the Lord’s Temple.
- 5They will not be able to celebrate the LORD’s feasts or festivals.[2]
- 6The people of Israel left because the enemy took everything from them. But Egypt will take the people themselves. Memphis[3] will bury them. Weeds will grow over their silver treasures, and thorns will grow where the Israelites lived.
- 7The prophet says, “Israel, learn this: The time of punishment has come. The time has come for you to pay for the evil things you did.” But the people of Israel say, “The prophet is a fool. This man with God’s Spirit is crazy.” The prophet says, “You will be punished for your terrible sins. You will be punished for your hate.”
- 8God and the prophet are like guards watching over Ephraim, but there are many traps along his way. And people hate the prophet, even in the house of his God.
- 9The Israelites have gone deep into ruin as in the time of Gibeah. God will remember the Israelites’ sins, and he will punish them.
- 10“At the time I, the Lord, found Israel, they were like fresh grapes in the desert. They were like the first figs on a fig tree at the beginning of the season. But when they came to Baal Peor,[4] they changed. So I had to cut them off like rotten fruit.[5] They became like the terrible things that they loved.
- 11“Like a bird, Ephraim’s glory will fly away. There will be no more pregnancies, no more births, and no more babies.
- 12But even if the Israelites do raise their children, it will not help, because I will take the children away from them. I will leave them, and they will have nothing but troubles.”
- 13I can see that Ephraim is leading his children into a trap. Ephraim will lead his children out to the killer.
- 14LORD, give them what you will. Give them a womb that loses babies and breasts that cannot give milk.
- 15All their evil is in Gilgal; I began hating them there. I will force them to leave my house because of the evil things they do. I will not love them anymore. Their leaders are rebels who turned against me.
- 16Ephraim will be punished. Their root is dying. They will not have any more babies. They might give birth to babies, but I will kill the precious babies who come from their bodies.
- 17Those people will not listen to my God, so he will refuse to listen to them. And they will wander among the nations without a home.