The lack of repentance and reform

15 I will return to my place,

until in remorse they seek my presence.

When they are in distress they will quickly seek me,

6 saying, ‘Come let us return to the Lord,

for he has torn us

but he will heal us,

he has injured us

but he will bandage our wounds,

2 he will revive in a couple of days,

on the third day he will raise us up again,

to live in his presence.

3 Let us know, let us eagerly seek to know the Lord.

His coming is as sure as the sunrise.

He will come to us like the winter rain,

as the spring rain that waters the earth.’

4 What can I make of you, Ephraim!

What can I make of you, Judah!

Your love is like a morning cloud,

like the dew which early goes away.

5 That is why I have hewn them by the prophets,

I have slain them by the words of my mouth.

My judgment is like the light that goes forth,

6 for it is love that I delight in and not sacrifice,

and knowledge of God and not burnt offerings.

7 But they after the manner of men have transgressed the covenant,

there they have played me false.

8 Gilead is a city of evildoers,

tracked with bloody footprints,

9 and as bandits lie in wait for a man,

so a band of priests murder on the way to Shechem.

How terrible is the evil they do!

10 In Bethel I have seen a horrible thing.

There Ephraim plays the prostitute,

Israel is defiled.

11 Judah for you also a harvest is set.

When I would restore the fortunes of my people,

7 when I would heal Israel,

then Ephrain’s guilt is revealed,

and Samaria’s crimes are seen,

how they practise fraud

and the thief enters in,

while outside bandits plunder.

2 But it never crosses their minds

that I remember their wickedness.

Now their misdeeds surround them,

they are always before my face.

3 Their wickedness amuses the king,

and their lying gladdens the princes,

4 since they are all of them adulterers.

Their desire to do evil

burns like an oven heated by the baker,

so hot that he need not stir the fire,

from the kneading of the dough, until it rises.

5 On our king’s festival day,

the princes are flushed with fever from wine.

He stretched forth his hand with the contemptuous[fn],

6 for like an oven their heart burns with treachery,

all night their anger smoulders,

in the morning it blazes into a flame of fire.

7 All of them glow like an oven,

they devour their rulers.

All their kings have fallen.

There is none among them who calls to me.