CHAPTER 5

                 ¹Hear this, you priests,

                     and listen, house of Israel,

                 and the house of the king, bend your ear,

                     for against you is the judgment.

                 For a trap you have been to Mizpah,

                     and an outspread net against Tabor,

                 ²and have dug a deep pit at Shittim,

                     but I am chastisement for them all.

                 ³I know Ephraim,

                     and Israel is not hidden from Me.

                 For now you have whored, Ephraim,

                     Israel is defiled.

                 ⁴Their acts do not let them

                     turn back to their God.

                 For the spirit of whoring is within them,

                     and the LORD they do not know.

                 ⁵And Israel’s pride bore witness against him,

                     and Israel and Ephraim stumble in their crime.

                         Judah, too, has stumbled with them.

                 ⁶With their sheep and their cattle they go

                     to seek out the LORD.

                 But they do not find Him.

                     He slipped away from them.

                 ⁷The LORD they betrayed,

                     for alien sons they bore.

                 Now the new moon shall consume them,

                     together with their fields.

                 ⁸Sound the ram’s horn at Gibeah,

                     the trumpet at Ramah.

                 Shout out at Beth-Aven:

                     “After you, Benjamin!”

                 ⁹Ephraim shall be a desolation

                     on the day of stern rebuke.

                 Among the tribes of Israel

                     I have faithfully made it known.

                 ¹⁰The nobles of Judah have become

                     like those who move boundaries.

                 Upon them I will pour

                     My wrath like water.

                 ¹¹Exploited is Ephraim,

                     and crushed in justice,

                 For he undertook to go

                     after an empty thing.

                 ¹²And I am like the moth to Ephraim

                     and like rot to the house of Judah.

                 ¹³When Ephraim saw his sickness

                     and Judah his running sores,

                 Ephraim went off to Assyria

                     and sent out to King Jareb.

                 But he cannot cure you

                     and will not give you healing.

                 ¹⁴For I am like a lion to Ephraim

                     and like the king of beasts to the house of Judah.

                 I, I will maul the prey and go off,

                     bear it away and no one will save it.

                 ¹⁵I will go, return to My place,

                     until they sense their guilt and seek Me,

                         when in straits they shall search for Me.