When I would grant✻ healing to Israel …

Foul shews the guilt of Ephraim, Samaria’s malice is plain to view. What a workshop of wrong-doing is here, all thieving within doors, all robbery without!

Let them never complain I am too nice over the chronicling of their misdeeds; why, they blazon these ill designs of theirs, under my very eyes!

King himself there is no pleasing but by villainy, nor his nobles but by flattering speeches;

false is every one of them to his troth. What else is this whole realm but baker that lights his fire, and then takes a rest from his kneading, leaves yeast to spread as it will?

Huzza for our king?✻ Ay, but see how the princes fall to their carousing, and he himself reaches out for the wine, reckless as they!

Their scheming adds fuel to the fire; are there not plots afoot? Sleeps baker the long night through, and morning finds him flaming hot like the rest.

A very furnace the city is; ruler may not abide nor king stand before the heat of it, and never a man among them invokes my name!

What wonder Ephraim should throw in his lot with the Gentiles? No better than a girdle-cake is Ephraim, baked only on one side.✻

Foreign neighbours, all unawares, have drained the strength of him; the dark locks, all unawares, dappled with grey;

and even now self-condemned stands the pride of Israel;✻ return to the Lord, recourse to the Lord is none, even now.

Never silly dove so lost her wits as this Ephraim, now calling on Egypt, now turning to Assyria for aid!

Fatal the journey; my net I mean to spread over them, catch them as in the fowler’s snare; public the chastisement shall be, as public the warning.

Dearly they shall pay for their wandering from me, ruin follow on the heels of rebellion; I their ransomer, and they so false!

Never do their hearts cry out to me; growl they like beast in den, or beast-like eat and drink and chew the cud; me they have forsaken.✻

Now I chasten them, now I strengthen their hands, and still they have no thought for me but of hatred;

ever they step back from the yoke,✻ like a twisted bow recoil.

Put to the sword their nobles must be, railing tongues the ruin of them. This the taunt that shall be uttered against them in the land of Egypt …