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he pursues the east wind all day long;
he continually multiplies lies and violence.
He makes a treaty with Assyria,
and sends olive oil to Egypt.
2 The Lord also has a charge to bring against Judah.
He will punish Jacob according to his ways;
according to his deeds He will repay him.
3 In the womb he grasps his brother’s heel;
as a man he struggled with God.
4 He struggled with the Angel and prevailed;
he wept and begged for His favour.
He found him at Bethel,
and there He spoke with him.
5 The Lord, the God of Hosts;
the Lord is His name!
6 But you must return to your God;
maintain love and justice,
and wait for your God always.
7 The merchant who holds dishonest scales in his hands
loves to defraud.
8 Ephraim boasts,
“How wealthy I have become; I have made myself rich.
In all my income, no one will be able to find
any iniquity to punish me for.”
9 “But I have been the Lord your God
ever since the land of Egypt.
I will make you live in tents again,
as in the days of appointed feasts.
10 I spoke through the prophets,
and I gave them many visions;
I told many parables through the prophets.”
11 Gilead is filled with iniquity;
they will come to nothing.
Though they sacrifice bulls in Gilgal,
their altars will be like piles of rocks
in the furrows of a ploughed field.
12 Jacob fled to the land of Aram;
Israel laboured to earn a wife,
and for a wife he tended sheep.
13 The Lord used a prophet to bring Israel up from Egypt,
and by a prophet he was tended.
14 Ephraim has provoked bitter anger;
his Lord will leave his bloodguilt on him
and repay him for his contempt.