When their liquor is gone [and their drinking parties are over],
They habitually go to play the prostitute;
Ephraim’s rulers continue to dearly love shame [more than her glory which is the Lord, Israel’s God].

When I would heal Israel,
The sin (guilt) of Ephraim is uncovered,
And the wickedness of Samaria,
Because they practice false dealing;
The thief enters,
Bandits ravage and raid outside.

For though he flourishes among the reeds (his fellow tribes),
An east wind (Assyria) will come,
The breath of the Lord rising from the desert;
And Ephraim’s spring will become dry
And his fountain will be dried up.
Assyria will plunder his treasury of every precious object.

When Ephraim saw his sickness,
And Judah his wound,
Then Ephraim went to Assyria [instead of the Lord]
And sent to [Assyria’s] great King Jareb [for help].
But he cannot heal you
Nor will he cure you of your wound [received in judgment].

I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hidden from Me;
For now, O Ephraim, you have played the prostitute and have worshiped idols;
Israel has defiled itself.

Ephraim mixes himself with the [Gentile] nations [seeking favor with one country, then another];
Ephraim is a cake not turned [worthless; ready to be thrown away].

Ephraim, as I have seen,
Is planted in a pleasant [and prosperous] meadow like Tyre;
But Ephraim will bring out his children to the executioner [for slaughter].

Ephraim is a trained heifer that loves to tread out the grain,
But I will come over her fair neck with a heavy yoke [for hard field work].
I will harness Ephraim;
Judah will plow and Jacob will harrow and rake for himself.

Ephraim is oppressed; he is broken and crushed by [divine] judgment,
Because he was determined to follow man’s command (vanities, filth, secular precepts).

They will not remain in the land of the Lord,
But Ephraim will return to [another] Egypt [in bondage]
And they will eat [ceremonially] unclean food in Assyria.

Ephraim was a watchman with my God, a [true] prophet [to warn the nation];
But the snare of a bird catcher was laid in all his paths.
And there is only deep hostility in the house of his God (the land of Israel).

When Ephraim spoke, there was trembling and terror.
He exalted himself [above the other tribes] in Israel;
But through [the worship of] Baal he became guilty and died [spiritually, and then came ruin, sealing Israel’s doom as a nation].