“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!’

Since Israel is stubborn
Like a stubborn heifer,
Can the Lord now pasture them
Like a lamb in a large field?

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

They have dealt treacherously against the Lord,
For they have borne illegitimate children.
Now the new moon will devour them with their land.

And they do not consider in their hearts
That I remember all their wickedness.
Now their deeds are all around them;
They are before My face.

Israel is swallowed up;
They are now among the nations
Like a vessel in which no one delights.

Even though they hire allies among the nations,
Now I will gather them up;
And they will begin to diminish
Because of the burden of the king of princes.

As for My sacrificial gifts,
They sacrifice the flesh and eat it,
But the Lord has taken no delight in them.
Now He will remember their iniquity,
And punish them for their sins;
They will return to Egypt.

Their heart is faithless;
Now they must bear their guilt.
The Lord will break down their altars
And destroy their sacred pillars.

Surely now they will say, “We have no king,
For we do not revere the Lord.
As for the king, what can he do for us?”

Now Jacob fled to the land of Aram,
And Israel worked for a wife,
And for a wife he kept sheep.

And now they sin more and more,
And make for themselves molten images,
Idols skillfully made from their silver,
All of them the work of craftsmen.
They say of them, “Let the men who sacrifice kiss the calves!”

Where now is your king
That he may save you in all your cities,
And your judges of whom you requested,
“Give me a king and princes”?