1: Don't waste your life in wild orgies, Israel. Don't party away your life with the heathen. You walk away from your God at the drop of a hat and like a whore sell yourself promiscuously at every sex-and-religion party on the street.
2: All that party food won't fill you up. You'll end up hungrier than ever.
3: At this rate you'll not last long in GOD's land: Some of you are going to end up bankrupt in Egypt. Some of you will be disillusioned in Assyria.
4: As refugees in Egypt and Assyria, you won't have much chance to worship GOD- Sentenced to rations of bread and water, and your souls polluted by the spirit-dirty air. You'll be starved for GOD, exiled from GOD's own country.
5: Will you be homesick for the old Holy Days? Will you miss festival worship of GOD?
6: Be warned! When you escape from the frying pan of disaster, you'll fall into the fire of Egypt. Egypt will give you a fine funeral! What use will all your god-inspired silver be then as you eke out a living in a field of weeds? [JC]
7: Time's up. Doom's at the doorstep. It's payday! Did Israel bluster, "The prophet is crazy! The "man of the Spirit' is nuts!"? Think again. Because of your great guilt, you're in big trouble.
8: The prophet is looking out for Ephraim, working under God's orders. But everyone is trying to trip him up. He's hated right in God's house, of all places.
9: The people are going from bad to worse, rivaling that ancient and unspeakable crime at Gibeah. God's keeping track of their guilt. He'll make them pay for their sins.
10: "Long ago when I came upon Israel, it was like finding grapes out in the desert. When I found your ancestors, it was like finding a fig tree bearing fruit for the first time. But when they arrived at Baal-peor, that pagan shrine, they took to sin like a pig to filth, wallowing in the mud with their newfound friends.
11: Ephraim is fickle and scattered, like a flock of blackbirds, their beauty dissipated in confusion and clamor, Frenetic and noisy, frigid and barren, and nothing to show for it--neither conception nor childbirth.
12: Even if they did give birth, I'd declare them unfit parents and take away their children! Yes indeed--a black day for them when I turn my back and walk off!
13: I see Ephraim letting his children run wild. He might just as well take them and kill them outright!"
14: Give it to them, GOD! But what? Give them a dried-up womb and shriveled breasts.
15: "All their evil came out into the open at the pagan shrine at Gilgal. Oh, how I hated them there! Because of their evil practices, I'll kick them off my land. I'm wasting no more love on them. Their leaders are a bunch of rebellious adolescents.
16: Ephraim is hit hard--roots withered, no more fruit. Even if by some miracle they had children, the dear babies wouldn't live--I'd make sure of that!"
17: My God has washed his hands of them. They wouldn't listen. They're doomed to be wanderers, vagabonds among the godless nations.