14 I will not punish your daughters when they play the prostitute, Nor your brides when they commit adultery; Because the men consort with prostitutes, And they sacrifice with the shrine prostitutes; And the people that does not understand will come to ruin.
Hear the word of Yahweh, you children of Israel; For Yahweh has a charge against the inhabitants of the land: "Indeed there is no truth, Nor goodness, Nor knowledge of God in the land.
You will stumble in the day, And the prophet will also stumble with you in the night; And I will destroy your mother. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you, That you may be no priest to me. Because you have your God's law, I will also forget your children.
being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their hearts;
Or don't you know that he who is joined to a prostitute is one body? For, "The two," says he, "will become one flesh."
Why don't you understand my speech? Because you can't hear my word.
Who is wise, that he may understand these things? Who is prudent, that he may know them? For the ways of Yahweh are right, And the righteous walk in them; But the rebellious stumble in them.
There shall be no prostitute of the daughters of Israel, neither shall there be a sodomite of the sons of Israel.
Many shall purify themselves, and make themselves white, and be refined; but the wicked shall do wickedly; and none of the wicked shall understand; but those who are wise shall understand.
They don't know, neither do they consider: for he has shut their eyes, that they can't see; and their hearts, that they can't understand. None calls to mind, neither is there knowledge nor understanding to say, I have burned part of it in the fire; yes, also I have baked bread on the coals of it; I have roasted flesh and eaten it: and shall I make the residue of it an abomination? shall I fall down to the stock of a tree? He feeds on ashes; a deceived heart has turned him aside; and he can't deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?
Why should you be beaten more, That you revolt more and more? The whole head is sick, And the whole heart faint.
He broke down the houses of the sodomites, that were in the house of Yahweh, where the women wove hangings for the Asherah.
He put away the sodomites out of the land, and removed all the idols that his fathers had made.
For they also built them high places, and pillars, and Asherim, on every high hill, and under every green tree; and there were also sodomites in the land: they did according to all the abominations of the nations which Yahweh drove out before the children of Israel.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Hosea 4
Commentary on Hosea 4 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 4
Prophets were sent to be reprovers, to tell people of their faults, and to warn them of the judgments of God, to which by sin they exposed themselves; so the prophet is employed in this and the following chapters. He is here, as counsel for the King of kings, opening an indictment against the people of Israel, and labouring to convince them of sin, and of their misery and danger because of sin, that he might prevail with them to repent and reform.
Hsa 4:1-5
Here is,
Hsa 4:6-11
God is here proceeding in his controversy both with the priests and with the people. The people were as those that strove with the priests (v. 4) when they had priests that did their duty; but the generality of them lived in the neglect of their duty, and here is a word for those priests, and for the people that love to have it so, Jer. 5:31. And it is observable here how the punishment answers to the sin, and how, for the justifying of his own proceedings, God sets the one over-against the other.
Hsa 4:12-19
In these verses we have, as before,