Hosea 7

¹when 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.

²But they do not consider

that I remember all their evil.

Now their deeds surround them;

they are before my face.

³By their evil they make the king glad,

and the princes by their treachery.

⁴They 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.

⁵On the day of our king, the princes

became sick with the heat of wine;

he stretched out his hand with mockers.

⁶For with hearts like an oven they approach their intrigue;

all night their anger smolders;

in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.

⁷All of them are hot as an oven,

and they devour their rulers.

All their kings have fallen,

and none of them calls upon me.

⁸Ephraim mixes himself with the peoples;

Ephraim is a cake not turned.

⁹Strangers devour his strength,

and he knows it not;

gray hairs are sprinkled upon him,

and he knows it not.

¹⁰The pride of Israel testifies to his face;

yet they do not return to the Lord their God,

nor seek him, for all this.

¹¹Ephraim is like a dove,

silly and without sense,

calling to Egypt, going to Assyria.

¹²As 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.

¹³Woe 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.

¹⁴They 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.

¹⁵Although I trained and strengthened their arms,

yet they devise evil against me.

¹⁶They return, but not upward;

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.