Or I will strip her naked
And expose her as on the day when she was born.
I will also make her like a wilderness,
Make her like desert land
And slay her with thirst.

“She will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them;
And she will seek them, but will not find them.
Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my first husband,
For it was better for me then than now!’

“For she does not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the new wine and the oil,
And lavished on her silver and gold,
Which they used for Baal.

Ephraim is oppressed, crushed in judgment,
Because he was determined to follow man’s command.

Ephraim was a watchman with my God, a prophet;
Yet the snare of a bird catcher is in all his ways,
And there is only hostility in the house of his God.

When Israel was a youth I loved him,
And out of Egypt I called My son.

But by a prophet the Lord brought Israel from Egypt,
And by a prophet he was kept.

When Ephraim spoke, there was trembling.
He exalted himself in Israel,
But through Baal he did wrong and died.