Bible Commentaries

God’s judgments against the sins of the people, Hosea 4:1-5, and of the priests, Hosea 4:6-11, and against their idolatry, Hosea 4:12-14. Judah is exhorted to take warning by Israel’s calamity, Hosea 4:15-19.

Hear; attend, consider, and duly weigh: it is the hearing of the mind, as well as of the ear, is here required.

The word of the Lord; he that speaks is the great God, though the messenger be a man; the message is not man’s, but it is the word, the message of the sovereign, holy; just, and mighty Jehovah, who ever speaks most important things, things that respect our duty and safety.

Ye children of Israel; you of the ten tribes, with whose ancestors my covenant was made, who received the law by the disposition of angels, but have not kept it, you that have turned aside from your God to idols.

The Lord; who knoweth your sins, who hateth, threateneth, and will judge, and punish unless you repent, it is he that speaketh, and summoneth you to plead with him.

Hath a controversy; just matter of debate or arguing against you; you have wronged him, and he will right himself, yet so that he will be clear in his judgment, all shall see that the just Lord doth justly, and that this people’s sins are the cause of all their sufferings, that God doth not delight to afflict the children of men.

With the inhabitants of the land; who dwell in the cities and towns of Israel, divided from the house of David, and from the house of God; ye that dwell with idolatrous neighbours: it is not a few, but the generality of the inhabitants; it is the whole land I have an action against.

There is no truth, no faithfulness, in their minds, words, or works; they cover falsehood with fair words, till they may fitly execute their designed frauds. There is neither plain-heartedness nor constancy in their purposes and words.

Nor mercy, kindness or gentleness of mind; all are hardened, and restrain their bowels, which should be opened toward the indigent and necessitous. There is neither compassion nor beneficence among them, they pity not, nor relieve any.

Nor knowledge of God; all generally are ignorant, know not what God hath done for them, or what God is in himself, or what candour and truth, or what tenderness and beneficence, he requires in his word; if they have a slight knowledge of those things, yet they consider them not. They have rased the knowledge of God out of their minds.

In the land: this speaks the universal ignorance, mercilessness, and unfaithfulness of that age.

By swearing; either falsely or profanely, or cursing and wishing evil to one; instead of truth here is perjury; instead of compassion here is execration and evil-speaking.

Lying of all kinds; affirming of falsehoods, denying of truths, defrauding, lessening good, and representing it what it is not, greatening what is in others ill, and so flattering in some cases, and defaming in other cases, &c.

Killing: though God hath forbidden all kinds and degrees of murder, this people, through ignorance of God, do fill the land with murders, either open or secret; by cruelty withholding relief from some, by violence and falsehood cutting off others: the temper of this people was toward killing, their designs laid for it, &c.

Stealing; injuring one another, either by taking away what was another’s, or detaining what should have been his, or giving less to another than was his due: every one inclined to frauds, many addicted to secret thefts, and some openly practicing it.

Committing adultery; which was a sin grown high among them, a sin directly against the truth and mercy which should have been among them. Under this, all degrees of adultery, unchaste thoughts, words, and gestures are included.

They break out; as waters that swell above all banks, or as unruly beasts that break over all hedges, so you, O Israelites, have broken down the hedge of the law, which expressly forbids what you daily practise.

Blood toucheth blood; slaughters are multiplied: by blood the Scripture understandeth slaughter, Genesis 4:10, &c.; Psalm 58:10. Possibly the wrong done by the adulterer was (as Ammon’s) revenged with the slaughter of the adulterer; or possibly it may refer to murders committed in the very court of the temple; so the blood of the murdered touched the blood of sacrifices. It is too particular to refer it to the blood of Zechariah slain between the porch and the altar, and which (some say) ran down to the altar and touched the blood of the sacrifice. Or what if this should refer to what will be ere long, when Jeroboam is dead, when Zachariah is murdered by Shallum, 2 Kings 15:10; Menahem slew Shallum, 2 Kings 15:14, and ripped up women with child in Tiphsah, 2 Kings 15:16; when Pekah slew Pekahiah, and Hoshea slew him? These kings being thus slain, no doubt much blood was spilt; all which happened in less than forty years; for from Zechariah to Pekah’s usurpation are but fourteen years, from Pekah’s entrance on the throne to Hoshea’s conspiracy are twenty years.

Therefore, since their sins are so many and so great, for those very sins already mentioned in the 1st and 2nd verses,

shall the land, which the ten tribes did now inhabit, mourn: it is a metaphorical expression, for properly it cannot be spoken of the senseless and inanimate creatures; but as men and women mourn under the loss of their comforts and joys, as they neglect themselves in their habits, and go less neat, so when the sins of the people shall bring an enemy upon the land, when war shall first spoil their cities, towns, vineyards, and oliveyards, and finally shall carry the people captive, all shall run into horrid and saddest state, and into doleful plight. The same expression see in Isaiah 24:4, and much like Amos 1:2.

Every one that dwelleth therein; no sort of men but had provoked God and sinned, no sort but should be punished; all that continue in the land till these threatened judgments overtake them.

Shall languish; shall with grief and vexation pine away; what they see with their eye shall make their heart ache, and faint with greatest dejectedness and despair, as the word imports, Isaiah 16:8 Joel 1:12.

With the beasts of the field: these are elsewhere menaced, Zephaniah 1:2, which see. God punisheth man in cutting off what was made for man’s benefit and comfort; and it is probable that the tamer cattle were starved for want of grass or fodder, all being eaten up and consumed by the wasting armies.

With the fowls of heaven; the tamer and innocent either killed by enemies, or, offended with stench and noxious air, die or forsake the country, or are devoured by eagles and birds of prey, which in those countries wait on armies.

Yea, the fishes of the sea also shall be taken away; whether by drying up the waters of rivers, lakes, and ponds, or by corrupting them with blood and carcasses, or by what other way we know not, he can do it, who saith he will; and we are sure it speaks the greatness of the threatened desolation.

Yet; though judgments great and wasting are so sure, though the approaching calamities will lay all utterly waste.

Let no man; none of private capacity, no priest or prophet, any more open their mouths to reason and debate with this people; let all know they are so obstinate and hardened it is to no purpose to warn any more.

Strive; contend, as in causes pleaded before a judge; lay not the law before them, who have so often refused to hear it.

Nor reprove; no more chide, or sharply inveigh against their sins and ways. Or this whole passage may be thus read,

Yet certainly there is none that may or can strive, & c. All are so corrupted, that there is none free who may with confidence argue against others. But our version is better of the two.

Thy people; thy countrymen, Hosea, if the former words be the words of God to the prophet. Or else, if they be the words of the prophet to the people, then he speaks to them of the temper of their neighbours and people with whom they dwelt. It is much one which we take, for Hosea was now among them; and whether his people or no, they are still the same persons spoken of.

Are as they that strive with the priest; there is no ingenuity, modesty, or fear of God or man left among them, they will contend with their teachers, reprovers, and counsellors; they will justify themselves, and contemn all reproof; they will adhere to sin, and reject all better advice, just as they Malachi 1:2,7 2:14. This doth not suppose, much less assert, the priests of Baal and the calves to be true priests; but were they as true as they are false, yet such is the temper of the people, they would not hear, consider, and amend, whoever contested with them. Let them alone therefore to perish with obstinate sinners.

Therefore, because thy sins are so many and so great, and thou art incorrigible in them,

shalt thou fall; the prophet turns his speech to the people, thou, O Israel; he speaks to them as to one person, they were all of one piece in sin, and should be so one in punishment. Fall; stumble, and fall, and be broken.

In the day; or this day, i.e. very suddenly, your fall shall be presently effected by your enemies’ power, vigilance, and successes; it shall be no longer delayed.

The prophet; who spake smooth things, who prophesied lies; the false prophets of Baal and the groves, Jeremiah 14:13-16 23:15.

Shall fall; be in as sad calamitous condition as any.

With thee; either the prophet that is with thee, that lived with and prophesied to this people; or, as we read it, when the people are ruined and captivated, with them the false prophet shall be likewise ruined and captivated.

In the night; either proverbially taken, people and prophet shall continually fall; or allusively, both shall fall as a man that falls in the night. Or else, the prophet shall fall in the darkest calamities, he shall be covered with thickest clouds, who falsely foretold and promised light unto such people.

And I, the Lord, against whom thou hast sinned, will destroy, cut off, or make to cease or be silent for ever: see Hosea 1:4.

Thy mother; both the state, or kingdom, and the synagogues, or mock churches: the public is as a mother to private persons: so all shall be destroyed; which also came to pass before the prophet Hosea died, he lived to see his threats fulfilled.

My people: the divorce was not yet issued out, the ten tribes yet were in some sense Ammi. Are destroyed; not only in the prophetic style, are, because ere long they shall most certainly be destroyed, but in the course of the history it is plain in matter of fact; many of them were cut off by Pul king of Assyria, 2 Kings 15, and many were destroyed by the bloody and cruel tyranny of Menahem, and more were ruined in their estates by exactions and impositions. The civil wars, the seditions, the usurpations of some and the deposing of others, were things the prophet Hosea lived to see, and I believe speaks of here as things that had already destroyed many.

For lack of knowledge of God, his law, his menaces, his providences, and government of the world. Had they known his holy nature, his jealousy for his own glory, his hatred of sin and his power to punish it, had they known their God, they would either have forborne to sin, or repented of what sins they had committed, and so prevented his wrath. Because thou: the prophet now turns his words from the people to the priests among them. The people’s ignorance was much from the ignorance and profane humour of their priests, and this the prophet doth tacitly charge on the priests, to whom he speaks as to one particular person:

Thou, who callest thyself, art accounted by the people, and goest under the name of a priest.

Hast rejected knowledge: strange perverseness! they who should direct others, who should be teachers, are and will be ignorant, will not know, reject knowledge; detestest to know, as the Chaldee paraphrase.

I will also reject thee; with equal dislike I will reject time, I will destroy your church constitution, and with that I will destroy your priesthood; and I will do this with detestation and abhorrence too.

Thou hast forgotten the law of thy God: O Israel, and you, O priests, you have all sinned together, slighted and disrespected the law, broken all the precepts of it, set up other gods, other worship, other priests than the law directs.

I will also forget; I will pay thee in thy own coin, I will forget, i. e. slight and disregard.

Thy children; the people of Israel, the whole kingdom of the ten tribes; both those pretended priests and their ghostly children with them.

As they; kings, priests, and people of that age, that is, Jeroboam the Second, great-grandson of Jehu, who raised the kingdom to its highest pitch and glory.

Were increased; both multiplied for number, and grew great in riches, power, and honour. Such temper were they of, Isaiah 1:2.

So they sinned against me: sin grew with their wealth and honour; God who raised them was by them provoked the more, they turned his bounty into sin: too usual a return from sinners to God.

I will change, turn by a just retaliation,

their glory into shame: they turned their glory, all that in which they might glory above others, into sin; I will turn it into shame; that shall be their dishonour which, had it been well used, might have been their honour. I will degrade their priests, impoverish the people, captivate both.

They, the priests who minister to the idols,

eat up the sin of my people; live upon with delight, maintain themselves and theirs; either by conniving at their sins, not reproving as they deserve, lest thereby they should disoblige persons, and lessen their bounty to them; or leave them to sin first, and next look for sacrifices for those sins, like some that make gain by the sins of people with whom they dispense. Or more plainly, by

sin is meant sin-offering, in which the priest had his share.

My people: see Hosea 4:6.

And they; covetous, luxurious, idolatrous priests, the priests of Baal and the calves,

set their heart on their iniquity; watch to, and earnestly desire, hope, and expect the people will sin, and bring offerings for sin, which is the iniquity as well as gain of these priests.