Israel will be punished

9 You people of Israel, do not shout joyfully during your festivals like people of other nations do!

I say that because you have ◄not been faithful to/abandoned► me, your God.

At every place where the people thresh grain

you have presented gifts to your idols like men pay money to prostitutes.

2 But soon there will not be enough grain [MTY, PRS] and wine [MTY, PRS] for you.

3 And you people will not remain in the land that I, Yahweh, gave to your ancestors.

You will be captured and taken to Assyria,

where you will become slaves like your ancestors were in Egypt;

and in Assyria you will be forced to eat food that Yahweh has forbidden you to eat.

4 You Israelis will not be able to give wine offerings to him,

or bring sacrifices to him.

None of your other sacrifices will please him;

they will be unacceptable to him, like [SIM] food that is touched by people at funerals,

and everyone who eats that food will become unacceptable to him.

They will be permitted to eat that food themselves,

but they will not be permitted to bring it into the temple.

5 At that time you will not [RHQ] be able to celebrate the feasts and sacred festivals.

6 And even if you escape and are not killed by the Assyrians,

you will be captured by the army of Egypt,

and you will die and be buried in Memphis, the capital of Egypt.

Briers will grow up and cover your treasures of silver,

and thorns will grow in your ruined tents/houses.

7 It is now the time for Yahweh to punish you,

to pay you back for all the sins that you have committed.

You people will soon know that.

You have committed very many sins,

and you very much hate Yahweh.

You consider that the prophets are foolish,

and you think that those who proclaim messages from him are crazy.

8 My God appointed me and the other prophets

to be like [MET] watchmen to warn you people of Israel,

but everywhere that we go, it is as though people set traps for us

and people are hostile to us, even in the temple of our God.

9 The sins that the Israeli people have committed are as awful as what the men of Gibeah did long ago;

so God will not forget the wicked things that they have done;

he will punish the Israelis for all those sins.

10 Yahweh says, “When I first started to do things to help Israel,

it seemed to me as though [SIM] I had found grapes in the desert.

Your ancestors were delightful,

like [SIM] the first figs that grow on fig trees each year.

But when they came to Peor Mountain,

they worshiped that disgusting idol Baal,

and they became as disgusting as the idol that they loved.

11 The things that cause Israel to be great will disappear

like [SIM] a bird that flies away;

most of their women will not become pregnant [DOU] or give birth to children.

12 Even if their children are born and start to grow up,

I will cause all of them to die while they are still young.

Terrible things will happen to them

when I abandon them!

13 I have seen Israel become beautiful and prosperous like Tyre city was before it was destroyed,

but now the people of Israel will be forced to take their children to be slaughtered by their enemies.”

14 Yahweh, I do not know [RHQ] what I should ask for my people.

So I ask that you do this one thing:

Cause the women who are pregnant to have miscarriages

and unable to nurse their babies.

15 Yahweh says, “Because of all the wicked things that my people did at Gilgal,

that is where I started to hate them.

And now, because of all the sinful things that they have done,

I will expel them from my country.

I will not love them any longer;

all their leaders rebel against me.

16 Israel is like [MET] a grapevine that is dried up;

like a vine [MET] whose roots are withered

and that produces no fruit.

Even if the women of Israel give birth to more children,

I will cause those children, whom they love, to die.

17 The people of Israel have not obeyed me, their God,

so I will reject them.

As a result, they will wander among the other nations, searching for a place to live.”

10 “Israel was like a large healthy/luxuriant vine [MET]

that produced a lot of grapes.

But as the people became richer,

they made more altars at which to worship idols.

As the people prospered,

they built and decorated sacred pillars that they worshiped.

2 They are deceitful;

so now they are guilty and must be punished.

I, Yahweh, will tear down their altars

and smash those pillars.

3 Then they will say, ‘It is because we did not revere Yahweh

that we no longer have a king.

But even if we had a king,

he certainly could not [RHQ] do anything to help us.’

4 They falsely promise that they will do many things;

they solemnly promise and make agreements,

but they do not do what they promise.

So people accuse and sue each other in the courts;

they are like [SIM] poisonous weeds that grow in a plowed field.

5 The people who live in Samaria city are worried about what may happen to the idol that resembles a calf that they set up at Beth-Aven town.

The people in Samaria will mourn,

and the priests there will cry about it

if it is damaged or destroyed.

Previously they shouted joyfully

about its being very great;

but now it will not be great any more.

6 It will be taken to Assyria

to be a gift for the great King of Assyria.

So the people of Israel will be disgraced,

and they will be ashamed

because they trusted in that idol.

7 The King of Samaria and the other people in Samaria will be gone;

they will be like [SIM] a twig that floats away on the surface of the water and disappears.

8 The altars on the tops of hills where the people worshiped idols will be destroyed;

those have been the places where the people of Israel sinned greatly.

Thorns and weeds will grow and cover those altars.

Then the people will plead to the mountains and hills,

‘Fall down and cover us

to protect us from God punishing us!’

9 You people of Israel, ever since your ancestors did evil things at Gibeah,

you have continued to sin.

When the people at [PRS] Gibeah did evil things,

the result was a war in which thousands of people died.

10 So now, when I want to, I will punish the Israeli people.

Because of the many sins that they have committed,

the armies of other nations will gather to attack them,

and they will cause the Israeli people to become their slaves.

11 Israel is like [MET] a well-trained ◄heifer/young cow►

that likes to thresh grain.

So now you will become slaves.

It will be as though I will put a yoke on your neck,

and you will be forced to work hard for your enemies in their fields.

You people of Israel and Judah will be forced to go to Assyria;

there you [DOU] will pull plows to break up the ground for planting seeds.

12 You plow your fields and plant your seeds and harvest your crops [MET],

but what you need to do is to act righteously and to faithfully love me;

you need to repent [MET],

because it is time to try to know me, Yahweh;

and if you do that, I will pour out [MET] many blessings on you.

13 You plant seeds and harvest the crops and eat them;

but what I consider that you have really done is that you have planted wicked things and harvested evil things

and eaten [MET] the results [IDM] of the lies that you have told.

Instead of trusting in me, you have ◄depended on/trusted in► your own power

and in your many soldiers.

14 As a result, you will soon hear the roar of battle,

and all your cities that have walls around them will be destroyed,

like [SIM] Shalman’s army destroyed Beth-Arbel city in a battle,

and the women in that city and their children were bashed to death.

15 You people of [APO] Bethel city, that is what will happen to you,

because you are very wicked.

And when the sun rises on that day,

the King of Israel will be killed in the battle.”