1. No merrymaking, Israel, for you, no rejoicing like other peoples, for you have deserted your God to play the whore, you have loved the fee of prostitution on every threshing-floor.

2. The threshing-floor and wine-press will not feed them; they will be disappointed of new wine.

3. No more will they live in Yahweh's country; Ephraim will have to go back to Egypt, and eat polluted food in Assyria.

4. No more will they pour libations of wine to Yahweh, and their sacrifices will not win his favour but will be like funeral fare for them: whoever eats them will be polluted; for their food will be for themselves alone, not being offered in Yahweh's home.

5. What will you do on the solemn feast-day, on the day of Yahweh's festival?

6. What a scene of devastastion they have left! Egypt will round them up, Memphis will bury them, nettles will inherit their fields and thorn-bushes invade their homesteads.

7. The days of punishment have come, the days of retribution are here; Israel knows it! 'The prophet is mad and the inspired man a fool!' Great has been your guilt- all the greater then the hostility!

8. The watchman of Ephraim is with my God: it is the prophet- and a fowler's trap is placed on all his paths; and in the shrine of his God there is enmity towards him.

9. They have become deeply corrupt as in the days of Gibeah; he will remember their guilt, he will punish their sins.

10. It was like finding grapes in the desert when I found Israel, like seeing early fruit on a fig tree when I saw your ancestors; but when they reached Baal-Peor they devoted themselves to Shame and became as loathsome as the thing they loved.

11. The glory of Ephraim will fly away like a bird: no giving birth, no pregnancy, no conceiving.

12. If they rear their children, I shall take them away before they grow up! Woe to them indeed when I leave them!

13. Ephraim looked to me like Tyre, planted in a meadow, so Ephraim will present his children to the slaughterer.

14. Give them, Yahweh- what are you to give? - give them wombs that miscarry and dried-up breasts.

15. Their wickedness appeared in full at Gilgal, there I came to hate them. Because of the wickedness of their deeds I shall drive them from my home, I shall love them no longer; all their princes are rebels.

16. Ephraim is blasted, their root has dried out, they will bear no more fruit. And even if they do bear children I shall slaughter the darlings of their womb.

17. Because they have not listened to him, my God will cast them off and they will become wanderers among the nations.





O Pai celeste está sempre disposto a contentá-lo em tudo o que for para o seu bem”. São Padre Pio de Pietrelcina