No rejoicing, Israel, no cries of gladness now! Wouldst thou be like the heathen, and rejoice that thou hast played thy God false, ever selling thy favours to the first comer, in return for a full threshing-floor?✻

Not for such reapers harvest and vintage; the wanton must go without her wine;

dispeopled, now, the Lord’s territory, Ephraim back in Egypt again, or tasting, among the Assyrians, unhallowed food.

Libation shall be none to win the Lord’s favour, nor any sacrifice; bread of theirs shall be as the bread mourners eat, defiling to the lips; fill their bellies it may, but into the Lord’s house it cannot enter.

Alas, what shift will you make when the great days come round, the Lord’s festivals?

Ruin fell on the citizens, and they are gone; Egypt the home of them now, Memphis the tomb of them; bowers that shone with silver the nettles have claimed, burdocks grow in the doorways.

Close at hand the audit-day, the doom close at hand! And wouldst thou know, Israel, why prophet is turned fool, and he can but rave now that once was inspired? God’s heavy plague is this for thy much sinning;

prophet of thine, watchman of thine, Ephraim, is a snare at every turn, luring thee to thy ruin, and at God’s decree; he stands there in God’s house, a plague to thee.

So deep the canker of their sin; Gabaa itself never knew worse wrong. For the remembered guilt of it they shall be called to account.✻

When I kept tryst with Israel long ago, rare the encounter, as of grapes out in the desert, of spring figs a-ripening high up on the tree. And all at once to Beelphegor they betook themselves, sold honour for shame, caught foul contagion from the things they loved!

Light as bird on bough, Ephraim’s glory has come and gone; womb is none that breeds, or, breeding, bears;

ay, though they should bring sons to manhood, childless their race shall be, nameless among men.

Woe betide them indeed, when I withdraw my presence from them!

Ephraim’s land, so fair a garden, as I look out over it towards Tyre! And must Ephraim rear her sons for the slaughter-house?✻

Thy gift to them, Lord, what is the best gift they can have of thee? A womb, assuredly, that miscarries, and dried-up breasts!

See where, at Galgal, their offence comes to a head; there it is they have made an enemy of me. They shall dwell in my domain no longer, claim love from me no longer; chieftains of theirs are no vassals of mine.

On Ephraim blight has fallen; withered the root now, wizened the fruit; beget they, doom of death is on their offspring, so dearly loved.

Cast away, my God, from thy presence, because heed thee they would not, cast away to wander homeless through the world!