Hosea 5

¹ Hear this, you priests, listen, House of Israel, pay attention, royal House, for it is you who have justice inyour care, but you have been a snare at Mizpah and a net outspread on Tabor.

² They have dug the ditch deep at Shittim and so I am going to punish them al .

³ Ephraim have I known, Israel is not hidden from me; and yet, Ephraim, you have played the whore,Israel is befouled.

⁴ Their deeds do not al ow them to return to their God, since an urge to play the whore possesses themand they no longer know Yahweh.

⁵ Israel's arrogance is his accuser, the guilt of Israel and Ephraim is their undoing, Judah too wil beundone with them.

⁶ Though they go in search of Yahweh with their sheep and cattle, they wil not find him; he haswithdrawn from them.

⁷ They have betrayed Yahweh because they have fathered bastards; now the new moon wil devourthem and their fields.

⁸ Sound the horn in Gibeah, the trumpet in Ramah, raise the war cry in Beth-Aven, 'We are behind you,Benjamin!'

⁹ When the day of punishment comes, Ephraim wil be a wasteland; on the tribes of Israel I havepronounced certain doom.

¹⁰ The rulers of Judah act like men who move the boundary stone; I shall pour my wrath out on them likea flood.

¹¹ Ephraim is oppressed, crushed by the sentence, for having deliberately fol owed a Lie.

¹² Because of this, I shall be like ringworm for Ephraim and like gangrene for the House of Judah.

¹³ Once Ephraim realised that he was sick and Judah that he had an ulcer, Ephraim then went toAssyria, he sent messengers to the Great King; but he has no power to cure you or to heal you of your sore;

¹⁴ for I shal be like a lion to Ephraim, like a young lion to the House of Judah; I myself shal rend them,then go my way, shal carry them off, beyond hope of rescue.

¹⁵ I shal go back to my place until they confess their guilt and seek me, seek me eagerly in their distress.