Hosea 4

Notes

Ver. 1-5. Let the ten tribes of Israel know assuredly that God, highly provoked with their hypocrisy, fraud, and falsehood, their uncharitableness and cruelty, their wilful or slothful ignorance of divine things, and by their presumptuous profane swearing, perjury, murder, theft, and adultery, the repeated, and everywhere frequent, murders of their kings and others, will, by sword, famine, and pestilence, render their country most miserable and desolate. But it is to no purpose to warn or reprove them, they are so hardened and obstinate, and are ready to flee in the face of the best authorized reprovers. Therefore they and their false prophets shall be destroyed together, and their civil constitution shall be utterly broken, and the people murdered or dragged into captivity. 6-11. Since the priests neglect to instruct the people, and reject or forget the law of God, I will exclude them and their children from the office and benefit of the priesthood; and since, as their numbers, wealth, and power increase, they become more daring in their impieties, I will strip them of all their possessions and honours, and render them miserable and contemptible captives. And since they, with eagerness and pleasure, pamper themselves with the flesh of the people's sinofferings, and even encourage them to sin, that their gain may abound; therefore shall priests and people, already alike in ignorance, intemperance, and profaneness, be quickly alike involved in fearful punishments. Their food being withdrawn or cursed, they shall be pinched with hunger. Their whoredoms shall not increase their families, nor their idolatries nor sinful alliances their strength.—For they have openly cast off all regard to me and my law; their whoredoms, idolatries, drunkenness, and luxury rendering them quite stupid and besutted. 12-14. Though they profess to be my people, they consult their wooden idols, and divine things by the falling of their staves. Instigated by the devil and their own idolatrous inclinations, they have renounced their dependence on me; and so abandoned themselves to idolatry, that there is scarcely the top of a hill, or a cluster of trees, where they do not worship some idol; and therefore will I give them up to the basest uncleanness and whoredoms, even in the worship of their idols, their daughters and wives being encouraged thereto by the example of their fathers and husbands:—in consequence of which, this besotted nation shall plunge themselves into ruin. 15-19. But though the Israelites have abandoned themselves to idolatry, let not the Jews copy their example, nor come near any of their idolatrous temples at Gilgal or Bethel, nor profane the name of the Lord by using it lightly, or attributing it to idols, or any way mixing his worship with idolatry or superstition;—for these Israelites are become quite headstrong and untractable in their apostasy from God to idols; and therefore shall their short-lived prosperity, under Jeroboam II. and Pekah, quickly issue in a miserable dispersion through the Assyrian empire. They are so violently addicted to idolatry, that it is needless for ministers to rebuke, conscience to check, Providence to restrain or afflict, or my Spirit to strive any more with them. Their drink-offerings and other services are quite abominable to me: and the wine which they have intemperately drunk turns sour on their stomach. They are perpetually occupied in whoredom and idolatry; and nothing can be obtained from their judges but by the force of shameful bribery: therefore shall the Assyrians hurry them into a miserable captivity and lasting dispersion, in which they shall with shame see their folly in trusting to idols and departing from God.

Ver. 1. 'The spiritual adultery of Israel, with its consequences, which the prophet has exposed in the first part, and chiefly in a symbolical mode, is more elaborately detailed here, not only with regard to its true nature, viz. the religious apostasy and moral depravity which prevailed throughout the ten tribes, but also in its inevitable consequences, the destruction of the kingdom and rejection of the people; and this is done with a repeated sideglance at Judah. To this there is appended a solemn appeal to return to the Lord, and a promise that the Lord will have compassion upon the penitent and renew his covenant of grace with them.' In these words Keil has well summarized the contents of the second part or division of this book, and its connection with the first. P.—A controversy. A phrase taken from a suit at law for injury inflicted on the person or damage-done to property. C.

Ver. 2. Break out—as water bursts through banks and overflows the land. C.

Ver. 3. The fishes of the sea shall be taken away. Sea, in Hebrew, is put for any considerable extent of water—and by drought in their tributary streams the supply of fish might be destroyed. Or, if the Great Sea be understood, the depredations of foreign fishermen might soon take away the supply from the feeble and unprotected Israelites. C.

Ver. 5. Therefore shalt thou fall. The address is to the idolatrous priest, comp. ver. 4,6, but includes the whole people as a church, whose office and dignity was 'a kingdom of priests,' Ex. 19.6. C.

Ver. 6. Thy children. The address is to the church as a mother, ver. 4; that is, to the church as intrusted with the education of her children. C.

Ver. 8. Eat up the sin. Not the sin-offering, but the sin itself, which they countenanced by their erroneous teaching, ver. 6, and which they were not desirous of correcting: because, as lawyers, judges, and magistrates, they derived their support from the fees, bribes, and fines arising from the public criminality. See ver. 18. C.

Ver. 11. Take away the heart of the rational and immortal man, and reduce him to the level of the beasts that perish, Ps. 49. 20. C.

Ver. 14. I will not punish, &c. This is contrary to both the tenor of God's law and providence. It should be translated, 'Shall not I punish,' &c.—Harlots. Such as prostituted themselves in idol temples in honour of the idol, as the word signifies. C.

Ver. 15. Gilgal. Famous for the renewal of the covenant of circumcision, Jos. 5. 1-9; infamous for the idolatry set up by Jeroboam. —Beth-aven—the same as Beth-el. 'The house of God,' in the days of faithful Abraham—'the house of iniquity, in the days of his faithless descendants. C.

Reflections.—Alas, what unhappy discord sin sows between God and men! But they who have lost the true knowledge of God, generally proceed from evil to worse. And profane ministers and magistrates are ordinarily ringleaders in guilt, and will rejoice in the wickedness of those under their charge, if it but add to their gain.—But it is just that God should withdraw his mercies from such as abuse them, and heap upon obstinate transgressors one plague after another; —that rebels against the light of his word should perish in their ignorance ;—that ignorant and scandalous ministers should be exposed to peculiar misery and shame;—that what is unlawfully gained should be blasted with a curse, and that with which we have dishonoured God should be turned to our shame;—and that sharers in sin should be sharers in punishment! Men will go the most dreadful lengths in sin when abandoned to their own hearts' lusts: every one will then keep another in countenance, and their dreadful crimes will at last be made a distinguished branch of their punishment. And when apostasy is general, there is great need to guard against the most distant compliance with it. It is hard to forbear the devil's service if we walk on his ground, or lose a proper reverence for God. And dreadful is the danger of complying with that which so quickly hurries men into sudden, unavoidable, and everlasting ruin.