Hosea 12

¹ All round me are the lies of Ephraim and the deceit of the House of Israel. But God still recognises Judah, and he is still called the people of the Holy One.

² Ephraim feeds on the wind, forever chasing the wind from the East, accumulating falsehood and fraud, making treaties with Assyria, sending oil to Egypt.

³ Yahweh has a case against Israel, he will pay Jacob as his conduct merits, and will repay him as his deeds deserve.

⁴ In the very womb he supplanted his brother, in maturity he wrestled against God.

⁵ He wrestled with the angel and beat him, he wept and pleaded with him. He met him at Bethel and there God spoke to him.

⁶ Yes, Yahweh God of Sabaoth, Yahweh is his name.

⁷ Turn again, then, to your God, hold fast to love and justice, and always put your trust in your God.

⁸ Canaan holds fraudulent scales in his hands, to defraud is his delight.

⁹ ‘How rich I have become!’ says Ephraim ‘I have amassed a fortune.’ But he will keep nothing of all his profits, because of the guilt that he has brought on himself.

¹⁰ have been Yahweh, your God, since the days in the land of Egypt I will make you live in tents again as on the day of Meeting[*a].

¹¹ I will speak to the prophets, I will increase the visions and through the prophets I will deal out death.

¹² Gilead is nothing but iniquity, they are falsehood, nothing else; at Gilgal they sacrifice to bulls; their altars shall be reduced to heaps of stones in a ploughed field.

¹³ Jacob fled to the plains of Aram, Israel worked to win a wife, to win a wife he looked after sheep.

¹⁴ But Yahweh brought Israel out of Egypt by a prophet, and a prophet looked after Israel.

¹⁵ Ephraim has given bitter provocation and Yahweh means to bring his bloodshed down on him, his Lord will repay him for his insults.