5:1 Hear this, O priests!
  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.
And the revolters have gone deep into slaughter,
  but I will discipline all of them.

I know Ephraim,
  and Israel is not hidden from me;
for now, O Ephraim, you have played the whore;
  Israel is defiled.
Their deeds do not permit them
  to return to their God.
For the spirit of whoredom is within them,
  and they know not the Lord.

The pride of Israel testifies to his face; [1]
  Israel and Ephraim shall stumble in his guilt;
  Judah also shall stumble with them.
With their flocks and herds they shall go
  to seek the Lord,
but they will not find him;
  he has withdrawn from them.
They have dealt faithlessly with the Lord;
  for they have borne alien children.
  Now the new moon shall devour them with their fields.

Blow the horn in Gibeah,
  the trumpet in Ramah.
Sound the alarm at Beth-aven;
  we follow you, [2] O Benjamin!
Ephraim shall become a desolation
  in the day of punishment;
among the tribes of Israel
  I make known what is sure.
The princes of Judah have become
  like those who move the landmark;
upon them I will pour out
  my wrath like water.
Ephraim is oppressed, crushed in judgment,
  because he was determined to go after filth. [3]
But I am like a moth to Ephraim,
  and like dry rot to the house of Judah.

When Ephraim saw his sickness,
  and Judah his wound,
then Ephraim went to Assyria,
  and sent to the great king. [4]
But he is not able to cure you
  or heal your wound.
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.

I will return again to my place,
  until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face,
  and in their distress earnestly seek me.

6:1 “Come, let us return to the Lord;
  for he has torn us, that he may heal us;
  he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.
After two days he will revive us;
  on the third day he will raise us up,
  that we may live before him.
Let us know; let us press on to know 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.”

What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?
  What shall I do with you, O Judah?
Your love is like a morning cloud,
  like the dew that goes early away.
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.
For I desire steadfast love [5] and not sacrifice,
  the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

But like Adam they transgressed the covenant;
  there they dealt faithlessly with me.
Gilead is a city of evildoers,
  tracked with blood.
As robbers lie in wait for a man,
  so the priests band together;
they murder on the way to Shechem;
  they commit villainy.
In the house of Israel I have seen a horrible thing;
  Ephraim's whoredom is there; Israel is defiled.

For you also, O Judah, a harvest is appointed,
  when I restore the fortunes of my people.
7:1 When I would heal Israel,
  the iniquity of Ephraim is revealed,
  and the evil deeds of Samaria;
for they deal falsely;
  the thief breaks in,
  and the bandits raid outside.
But they do not consider
  that I remember all their evil.
Now their deeds surround them;
  they are before my face.
By their evil they make the king glad,
  and the princes by their treachery.
They 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.
On the day of our king, the princes
  became sick with the heat of wine;
  he stretched out his hand with mockers.
For with hearts like an oven they approach their intrigue;
  all night their anger smolders;
  in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.
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.

Ephraim mixes himself with the peoples;
  Ephraim is a cake not turned.
Strangers devour his strength,
  and he knows it not;
gray hairs are sprinkled upon him,
  and he knows it not.
The pride of Israel testifies to his face; [6]
  yet they do not return to the Lord their God,
  nor seek him, for all this.

Ephraim is like a dove,
  silly and without sense,
  calling to Egypt, going to Assyria.
As they go, I will spread over them my net;
  I will bring them down like birds of the heavens;
  I will discipline them according to the report made to their congregation.
Woe 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.

They do not cry to me from the heart,
  but they wail upon their beds;
for grain and wine they gash themselves;
  they rebel against me.
Although I trained and strengthened their arms,
  yet they devise evil against me.
They return, but not upward; [7]
  they are like a treacherous bow;
their princes shall fall by the sword
  because of the insolence of their tongue.
This shall be their derision in the land of Egypt.

8:1 Set the trumpet to your lips!
  One like a vulture is over the house of the Lord,
because they have transgressed my covenant
  and rebelled against my law.
To me they cry,
  “My God, we—Israel—know you.”
Israel has spurned the good;
  the enemy shall pursue him.

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.
I have [8] spurned your calf, O Samaria.
  My anger burns against them.
How long will they be incapable of innocence?
For it is from Israel;
a craftsman made it;
  it is not God.
The calf of Samaria
  shall be broken to pieces. [9]

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.
Israel is swallowed up;
  already they are among the nations
  as a useless vessel.
For they have gone up to Assyria,
  a wild donkey wandering alone;
  Ephraim has hired lovers.
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.

Because Ephraim has multiplied altars for sinning,
  they have become to him altars for sinning.
Were I to write for him my laws by the ten thousands,
  they would be regarded as a strange thing.
As for my sacrificial offerings,
  they sacrifice meat and eat it,
  but the Lord does not accept them.
Now he will remember their iniquity
  and punish their sins;
  they shall return to Egypt.
For Israel has forgotten his Maker
  and built palaces,
and Judah has multiplied fortified cities;
  so I will send a fire upon his cities,
  and it shall devour her strongholds.