¹Horn to your mouth! Like an eagle over the house of Yahweh, because they overstepped my covenant and rebelled against my instruction.

²To me they cry out, 'My God, we know you — we, Israel!'

³Israel has cast away good; an enemy will pursue him.

⁴They made kings, but not from me; they set up leaders, and I did not know it; with their silver and their gold they made for themselves idols, so that it may be cut off.

⁵He has cast away your calf, Samaria; my anger has burned against them. How long will they be unable to attain cleanness?

⁶For it comes from Israel; an engraver made it, and it is not God; indeed the calf of Samaria will become splinters.

⁷For they sow wind, and a storm-wind they reap; it has no standing grain; the sprout yields no flour; if perhaps it yields, strangers will swallow it down.

⁸Israel is swallowed down; now they are among the nations like a vessel in which there is no delight.

⁹For they have gone up to Assyria, a wild donkey standing apart by itself; Ephraim has hired lovers.

¹⁰Even though they hire among the nations, now I will gather them; and they will begin to dwindle under the burden of the king of officials.

¹¹For Ephraim multiplied altars for sinning; the altars became his for sinning.

¹²I write for him the multitude of my instruction; it is reckoned like something foreign.

¹³As for the sacrifices of my gifts, they sacrifice flesh and they eat, but Yahweh is not pleased with them; now he will remember their guilt and punish their sins; they will return to Egypt.

¹⁴And Israel forgot his maker and built palaces, and Judah multiplied fortified cities; so I will send fire on his cities, and it will devour her citadels.