1: "Listen to this, priests! Attention, people of Israel! Royal family--all ears! You're in charge of justice around here. But what have you done? Exploited people at Mizpah, ripped them off on Tabor,
2: Victimized them at Shittim. I'm going to punish the lot of you.
3: "I know you, Ephraim, inside and out. Yes, Israel, I see right through you! Ephraim, you've played your sex-and-religion games long enough. All Israel is thoroughly polluted.
4: They couldn't turn to God if they wanted to. Their evil life is a bad habit. Every breath they take is a whore's breath. They wouldn't recognize GOD if they saw me.
5: "Bloated by arrogance, big as a house, they're a public disgrace, The lot of them--Israel, Ephraim, Judah--lurching and weaving down their guilty streets.
6: When they decide to get their lives together and go off looking for GOD once again, They'll find it's too late. I, GOD, will be long gone.
7: They've played fast and loose with me for too long, filling the country with their bastard offspring. A plague of locusts will devastate their violated land.
8: "Blow the ram's horn shofar in Gibeah, the bugle in Ramah! Signal the invasion of Sin City! Scare the daylights out of Benjamin!
9: Ephraim will be left wasted, a lifeless moonscape. I'm telling it straight, the unvarnished truth, to the tribes of Israel.
10: "Israel's rulers are crooks and thieves, cheating the people of their land, And I'm angry, good and angry. Every inch of their bodies is going to feel my anger.
11: "Brutal Ephraim is himself brutalized--a taste of his own medicine! He was so determined to do it his own worthless way.
12: Therefore I'm pus to Ephraim, dry rot in the house of Judah.
13: "When Ephraim saw he was sick and Judah saw his pus-filled sores, Ephraim went running to Assyria, went for help to the big king. But he can't heal you. He can't cure your oozing sores.
14: "I'm a grizzly charging Ephraim, a grizzly with cubs charging Judah. I'll rip them to pieces--yes, I will! No one can stop me now. I'll drag them off. No one can help them.
15: Then I'll go back to where I came from until they come to their senses. When they finally hit rock bottom, maybe they'll come looking for me."