[9:1] People of Israel, stop celebrating your festivals like pagans. You have turned away from your God and have been unfaithful to him. All over the land you have sold yourselves like prostitutes to the god Baal and have loved the grain you thought he paid you with!
[9:2] But soon you will not have enough grain and olive oil, and there will be no wine.
[9:3] The people of Israel will not remain in the Lord's land, but will have to go back to Egypt and will have to eat forbidden food in Assyria.
[9:4] In those foreign lands they will not be able to make wine offerings to the Lord or bring their sacrifices to him. Their food will defile everyone who eats it, like food eaten at funerals. It will be used only to satisfy their hunger; none of it will be taken as an offering to the Lord's Temple.
[9:5] And when the time comes for the appointed festivals in honor of the Lord, what will they do then?
[9:6] When the disaster comes and the people are scattered, the Egyptians will gather them up—gather them for burial there at Memphis! Their treasures of silver and the places where their homes once stood will be overgrown with weeds and thorn bushes.
[9:7] The time for punishment has come, the time when people will get what they deserve. When that happens, Israel will know it! “This prophet,” you say, “is a fool. This inspired man is insane.” You people hate me so much because your sin is so great.
[9:8] God has sent me as a prophet to warn his people Israel. Yet wherever I go, you try to trap me like a bird. Even in God's Temple the people are the prophet's enemies.
[9:9] They are hopelessly evil in what they do, just as they were at Gibeah. God will remember their sin and punish them for it.