BIG IDEA:
CORRUPT RELIGIOUS LEADERS PROVOKE JUDGMENT FOR THE REJECTION OF GOD’S WORD
INTRODUCTION:
J. Andrew Dearman: Overall, 4:4–19 elaborates on the charge against the people in 4:1–3, with the priesthood initially a major focus of attention (cf. 5:1). The spirit of harlotry mentioned in v. 12 is Hosea’s characterization of the priesthood and the people in this section. The addressees are a priest (4:4–6), the priesthood (4:7–10), and the people (4:11–19).
Duane Garrett: Three times in this passage, in 4:6, 8, 12, Hosea alludes to the name Lo-Ammi (“not my people”). In v. 6 he declares that “my people” (‘ammî) perish for lack of sound teaching from the priests. In v. 8 he declares that the priests feed upon the sins of “my people” (‘ammî). In vv. 11–12 he asserts that the religious life of “my people” (‘ammî) consists in the most primitive form of superstition. But in v. 4 he asserts that “your people” (that is, the priests’ people) can rightly blame the priests for their condition. The overall meaning is clear; the ordinary men and women of Israel, who should have been the pious people of God, had lost that status due to the greed and negligence of the priesthood. Instead, they had become the priests’ people.
David Malick: The LORD indicts the people of the nation for having no knowledge of Him since they will not listen to His teaching and are given over to idolatry 4:4-19
- The nation has rejected knowledge, and forgotten the Law and will thus be rejected and forgotten by the LORD 4:4-6
- The people sin against one another and direct one another into more sin, therefore they will be judged 4:7-10
- The people of Israel are without understanding in that they are given over to idolatry 4:11-14
- The people of Israel are warned not to go to holy cities and pollute them with their idolatry, but to remain alone unto their own judgment 4:15-19
Allen Guenther: Outline
Indictment 1: Rejecting the Source of Knowledge, 4:4-6
4:4-5 I Wasn’t Told
4:6a I Don’t Want to Know
4:6b-e I Don’t Remember
Indictment 2: Perverting the Knowledge of God, 4:7-12a
4:7-8 For Personal Gain
4:9 Priest and people Alike
4:10-12a For Personal Pleasure
Indictment 3: Consorting with Lovers, 4:12b-19
4:12b-13a Prostitution by Choice
4:13b-14 Double Standards
4:15 Divine Counsel to Judah
4:16-17 Divine Appraisal of Israel
4:18-19 Partners in Shame
Five Accusing word pairs jolt the reader to attention:
Let no one contend . . . my contention / contending
You shall stumble . . . the prophet shall stumble
I will destroy . . . My people are destroyed
Because you have rejected . . . I reject you from
Since you have forgotten . . . I will forget
A question and a protest seem to lie behind all three oracles in chapter four: “We are the covenant people, and do you say that we don’t know God? That’s not possible. We are doing exactly as the priests instruct us.”
I. (:4-6) REJECTING GOD’S WORD LEADS TO JUDGMENT ON BOTH THE PEOPLE AND THEIR CORRUPT RELIGIOUS LEADERS
Grace Emmerson: Whether the accusation is directed against an individual priest (vv. 4–6 are in the singular) or priests in general is unclear. The seriousness of the accusation and its far-reaching consequences (v. 6) suggest the latter, as do the plural verbs of vv. 7–8. There is no escape from Yahweh’s judgment.
ChatGPT: Israel’s sin is not merely personal but institutional. The priests, the leaders, and the people are all complicit in abandoning God’s standards.
In this context, the leaders (priests) failed to uphold God’s law, and Israel rejected correction, leading to a collapse in spiritual discernment and accountability.
A. (:4-5) Religious Leadership Actually Provoke Judgment
- (:4a) Rationalizations and Excuses Lack Moral Standing
“Yet let no one find fault, and let none offer reproof;”
- (:4b) Rejection of Counsel by the Priest Due to Stubbornness
“For your people are like those who contend with the priest.”
H. Ronald Vandermey: The fourth verse suggests that a contention had arisen as to who was at fault for the people’s present predicament.
H. D. Beeby: Without hesitation Hosea points the accusing finger at the priest. If the fruits of the Covenant are missing, then the blame must be laid at the door of the Covenant-keeper par excellence, namely, the priest. Israel, the kingdom of priests (Exod. 19:6), can be priests to the world and to nature only if they themselves are properly priested. Unfortunately these keepers of the Covenant were following too closely in the footsteps of Aaron their “father” (Exod. 32). He had led Israel into idolatry rather than ensuring they remained faithful to the conditions of the Covenant.
- (:5a) Rejection of Direction from the Prophets as Well Leading to Mutual Stumbling
“So you will stumble by day,
And the prophet also will stumble with you by night;”
M. Daniel Carroll R.: Unlike God, who has the authority and every justification to question his people, they have no moral basis to argue with anyone or to complain. In terms of its character, Israel is stubborn. The people are like “those who contend with a priest,” meaning that they are unwilling to heed a true word that might come from Yahweh’s representatives (cf. Dt 17:12–13; Am 2:11–12). So the people stumble in their sin (cf. 5:5; 14:1, 9), and in this stumbling they are joined by the very religious leaders, the prophets, who were to have been their guides and models (cf., e.g., Isa 3:2; 28:7; Jer 2:26; 23:9–40; Mic 3:5–8).
David Allen Hubbard: Stumble (v. 5) is a favourite word in Hosea to describe the disasters that beset those who do not walk in God’s ways. The wayward fall on their faces so hard that it is impossible to get up without outside help (cf. 5:5; 14:1, 9). The timing – priest by day and prophet by night – is not designated so much to distinguish between the falls as to indicate that either may stumble at any time, whether night (when one might expect it) or day (when one would ordinarily feel safe). The expression may be a merism in which contrasts of time are listed so as to cover the whole range of possibilities.
Robin Routledge: The metaphor of stumbling (kāšal) indicates failure to walk the right path. Elsewhere in Hosea, the people stumble because of sin (5:5; 14:1, 9). Here, that is traced back to priests and prophets: religious leaders who have collaborated in their support of corrupt cultic institutions, and so have failed to instruct the people in the ways of Yahweh. The nrsv reflects the mt: ‘You shall stumble by day; the prophet also shall stumble with you by night’, indicating the continual failure of those who should be providing spiritual leadership.
- (:5b) Reality of Certain Destruction of Israel’s Institutions
“And I will destroy your mother.”
Duane Garrett: The “mother” is again the representation of institutional Israel, the entity that corrupts the ordinary people, the “children,” and that empowers the hierarchy. Destroying the “mother” refers to the overthrow of the power and prerogatives of the religious leadership. In short, assertions that the clergy stumbles and that God is destroying their mother both imply destruction of Israel’s institutions.
Robin Routledge: The action of corrupt leaders will result in the ruin of the nation. This is further linked to a lack of knowledge, which is a frequent theme in the book. In this context it refers to the knowledge of God (cf. 4:1; 6:6) and continues the indictment of the priests, whose responsibility it was to instruct the people (cf. Deut. 33:10; Mal. 2:6–7).
B. (:6) Reason for Judgment = Lack of Knowledge Due to Rejecting God’s Word
- Judgment on the People
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”
James Mays: The cause of that destruction is the lack of ‘the knowledge’ (cf. the culminating charge of Yahweh’s rīb in 4.1). ‘The knowledge’ is an abbreviated form of the expression ‘the knowledge of God/Yahweh’. Its content is clearly indicated by the parallelism with tōrā in this verse and the list of crimes against the law in 4.2; ‘knowledge’ is learning and obeying the will of the covenant God in devotion and faithfulness; it is response to the unity of Yahweh’s saving act and binding requirement such as is expressed in ‘I am Yahweh your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me …’ (Ex. 20.2ff.). The lack of such knowledge had led to the loss of any reality in the role of being the covenant people. In Hosea’s view of Israel’s priesthood, the primary function of the office was to maintain and pass on the tōrat ’elōhēkā, instruction concerning the covenant God. Tōrā means both the act of instruction and the content of what is passed on.
- Judgment on the Priesthood
a. For Rejecting Knowledge
“Because you have rejected knowledge,
I also will reject you from being My priest.”
James Mays: Their sin determines their punishment; what the priests have done to Yahweh, he will do to them. They reject his revelation; he rejects their priesthood. The father in office and the sons who would inherit the office (I Sam. 2.27ff.) are stripped of their ordination by the word of a lone prophet standing outside the organization of the official religion of the kingdom!
Gary Smith: God’s response is to reciprocate by rejecting the priests (4:6). He will ignore their children, just as the priests have ignored his words. There is a certain level of justice in God’s action. You get what you deserve. God will repay each one for his or her deeds in an appropriate manner (4:9). He cannot bless the families of those priests who have purposely deserted him. The priests are doubly accountable because they have prevented the people from hearing about the personal relationship God wants to have with his people (4:10). The priests have even gotten involved with the drinking and prostitution going on at these temples. God will not reward these priests with any blessings, but instead will send a curse. Yes, both the priests and the people will be punished severely by God (4:9).
b. For Forgetting the Law of God
“Since you have forgotten the law of your God,
I also will forget your children.”
Trent Butler: God’s punishment is directed first of all toward the priests. God rejects the priests who are supposed to teach the people his word, because the priests have forgotten (NIV ignored) the law of your God. Parents were responsible to teach God’s Torah to the people (Deut. 33:10). Priests had the professional responsibility to teach Torah (Ezek.7:26). But God’s people were not learning the truth from home or temple. So the God who remembers (Lev. 26:42,45) became the God who forgets. The priesthood was a family profession—children inherited the position from their fathers—but God would put a stop to that.
J. Andrew Dearman: To forget something means to fail to bring something to conscious focus or to ignore its significance, so that it no longer guides a person to the proper response. Correspondingly, if one remembers, then the matter is brought to mind in such a way that a proper response then ensues.
David Allen Hubbard: The magnitude of the priestly sin of omission, the failure to teach the law, is seen in its staggering consequences: the collapse of the priesthood (vv. 4, 6c, e) and the destruction of the nation (vv. 5c–6a). And the preciousness of the law to Yahweh is underscored by its comparison to the children of the priest (v. 6d, e).
II. (:7-10) RELIGIOUS CORRUPTION PERVERTS GLORY INTO SHAME
Anthony Petterson: The sacrificial system was God’s gracious gift to deal with sin, and the priesthood had an honored status in overseeing it. But the priests perverted the sacrifices into something that served their own greed and so were a disgrace (see Eli’s sons in 1Sa 2:12-17). Both people and priests will be punished (Hos 4:9). God will hand them over to their sin, and they will not experience his covenant blessings (4:10).
A. (:7-8) Greedy Desires Lead to Compounding Corruption and Ultimate Shame
- (:7a) Compounding the Sin = Their Decline
“The more they multiplied, the more they sinned against Me;”
Grace Emmerson: The accusation here concerns not neglect of duty but abuse of privilege. The priests were entitled to a share in certain sacrifices (Lev 6:26; 7:28–36), but their greed had encouraged the proliferation of sacrifice to their own advantage. Yet the people, too, were not free of responsibility; “people and priest will fare alike” (4:9, REB), experiencing not fertility but futility.
Duane Garrett: “The more the priests increased” apparently refers to the fact that during a time of prosperity the number of people free to enter a religious vocation increases. Israel experienced such prosperity under Jeroboam II, and no doubt many considered the increased numbers of priests, their increased power, and the increased interest in formal worship to be signs of spiritual vitality. To the contrary, Hosea retorts, the more religious leadership the nation had, the worse they became.
David Allen Hubbard: The increase described in verse 7 seems to be the numerical growth of the priesthood. Growth in numbers was matched by growth in sinfulness, since all priests were caught up in the sin of rejecting the law (v. 6). This multiplication of iniquity in the nation is evidently in proportion to the multiplication of the prosperity of the land in the reign of Jeroboam II. Instead of multiplying her devotion to God, Israel multiplies her self-reliant endeavours and, even worse, her dependence upon the Baals
- (:7b) Changing Glory into Shame = Their Destiny
“I will change their glory into shame.”
- (:8) Corrupting Both the People and the Priesthood = Their Desires
“They feed on the sin of My people,
And direct their desire toward their iniquity.”
Trent Butler: Apparently God changes his target here, and again, as in Hosea 4:6, he condemns the priests. They were encouraging Israel to bring sacrifices to the temple and were eating the priestly portions (Lev. 7:28–38). . .
The priests have sold their soul to do anything to cause Israel to bring more sinful offerings so the priests are getting richer and fatter. “Soul” here refers to the basic identity of the person and what he strives for in achieving such identity. The priests no longer gain identity from serving God. They set their aim on food and fortune.
Duane Garrett: [Hosea] regards the whole system of sacrifice as corrupted and of having lost its original intent. Instead of being a means of confession and grace, it had become a means of permissiveness for the people and of gluttony for the priests. In addition, the “wickedness” of the laity only increases the power of the religious professionals because the people’s guilt gives the leaders a means of manipulation. Finally, the wickedness of their religion may also have included the practice of sacred prostitution. Decadent religious authority leads ironically to cheap grace and immorality as well as to domineering by a clergy that knows how to play upon the fear and superstition of a poorly instructed people.
James Mays: What is meant by saying that the priests make a living (lit. ‘eat’) off the guilt of Israel is seen from texts like 8.11, 13; 5.6. The sacrifices offered on the many altars of the nation are sin in Yahweh’s sight (cf. Amos 4.4f.); Yahweh rejects them because this cult of killing, burning, eating cattle has become the people’s way of manipulating him, and has taken the place of devotion to him and knowledge of his revelation (6.6). Worship by sacrifice has become in fact rupture of the covenant. What Yahweh rejects, the people love and the priests encourage. Since the officiating priest received a portion of the sacrificed animal, they had a vested interest in a prolific cult. Their profit has become the true goal of their vocation, and they have turned the institution of worship into a service to the clergy. What do they care about the old orthodoxy of Israel as the people of Yahweh, when religion abounds and priests prosper? The bizarre result is a priest who officiates over sinning instead of nurturing true faith.
David Thompson: These leaders pursue their iniquity at the expense of God’s people. They make their living off of God’s people and feed off of it. They were taking the offerings and the money and they just continued pursuing their own pagan lifestyle.
Wolff: The criticism of the cultic sacrifices is aimed at the selfish interests of the priests who in the sacrifices seek their own private gain. As in verse 6a, Yahweh, in the form of the messenger speech, again sympathetically takes the side of Israel, calling them anew “My people!” With their sacrificial cult, the priests do not serve the people of God with the divine gifts entrusted to them; instead, at the people’s expense they store up their own profit and advantage.
Robin Routledge: Instead of helping them overcome sin, the priests revel in the people’s failure. This may be because it served to increase the significance and status of the cult. There may also be a deliberate play on words. The first word for sin, ḥaṭṭāʾt, may also refer to the ‘sin offering’ (Andersen and Freedman 1980: 342), which was offered to make atonement for some sins. As part of the ritual, the priests ate some of the sacrifice (e.g. Lev. 6:24–29; 10:17–20). Thus, the more the people sinned, the better the priests ate (cf. 1 Sam. 2:12–17). This further reflects Hosea’s view that the priesthood is intentionally self-serving.
B. (:9-10) Gloomy Destiny of Punishment and Futility for Religious Corruption
- (:9) Punishment of Both People and Priests
“And it will be, like people, like priest;
So I will punish them for their ways, And repay them for their deeds.”
Trent Butler: The priests sin and even cause the people to sin. God will dedicate his anointed priests to destruction. They will pay the price for their sinful ways and deeds. No profession or religious activity protects sinful people from God’s punishment for sin.
M. Daniel Carroll R.: The enigmatic proverbial saying “like people, like priest” communicates that the priests exhibit the same character as the nation and will endure a similar fate (v.9). This verse anticipates the attention that will be given to the religious leaders in the next chapter.
Derek Kidner: It is a saying about judgment: a warning that there will be no exemptions. No privilege will shelter this supposed élite. There is a strikingly similar prophecy in Isaiah 24:1-3, speaking of the end time, where the same Hebrew phrase, ‘like people, like priest’, heads a list (‘as with the slave, so with his master’, and so on) which demonstrates the equal exposure of us all to the day of God.
Lloyd Ogilvie: The idiom, like people, like priest, is a blunt reminder that people emulate their leaders. The Hebrew idiom can also be interpreted that priest and people will be judged. The construction does not indicate by itself who is being compared to whom. However, in the context, the focus is on the guilt of the priests who have misled God’s people. The tragedy was that the people were willing to be led in the wrong direction. But without a consistent teaching of the Law, there was no objective standard by which they could discern right from wrong.
- (:10) Promise of Futility for Their Apostasy
“And they will eat, but not have enough;
They will play the harlot, but not increase,
Because they have stopped giving heed to the LORD.”
Robin Routledge: Because the priests have deserted Yahweh, their sinful pursuits will lead only to frustration.
Derek Kidner: The terms of the coming judgment, as initially announced in verse 10, are distinctly appropriate. Food and sex have been these priests’ obsession: food and sex will fail them, the one by shortage, the other by sterility – for it is a theme of Scripture and a fact of life that things material are precarious, and things merely sensual frustrating. Our Lord captured both these limitations in a single aphorism: ‘Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again’ (Jn. 4:13). Of course, to ‘play the harlot’ is a metaphor here for flirting with false gods; but it had a special aptness in view of the ritual fornication that was part of the attraction of these rivals, as verse 14b reminds us.
Trent Butler: The adulterous generation (Hos. 4:2) will continue their immoral ways of worship, but sexual relationships at the worship center will not lead God to fulfill his promise to multiply the population. God had promised to multiply or “spread out” his people (Gen. 28:14). He had fulfilled that promise in difficult times (Exod. 1:12), but he would cut off that promise in the time of greatest prosperity because the people and the priests had abandoned their devotion to God.
Duane Garrett: The end of v. 10 can be translated, “For they have abandoned keeping faith with Yahweh.” In short, this summarizes all the misdeeds of the priesthood in a single line: they are apostate. Their failure to give sound teaching, their greed, and their promotion of sin are all at root rejection of God.
III. (:11-14) RUINATION ATTRIBUTED TO HARLOTRY, WINE AND ILLEGITIMATE WORSHIP – ALL ROOTED IN A LACK OF UNDERSTANDING
Gary Smith: The second charge explains how ignoring God’s revelation is affecting the worship celebrations of the people. What is going on at the temples is astonishing: prostitution, drunkenness, idol worship, divination, and all the perversions that go with them. These activities do not help the people reflect on life’s values, draw out rational conclusions about right and wrong, or please God. Instead, they “take away the understanding of my people.” These activities dull the mind so much that it is impossible for them truly to know Israel’s God.
These practices describe the passionate sexuality of the Baal cult (some think such sexual activity will magically encourage Baal to give them fertility) and have nothing to do with maintaining a covenant relationship with Israel’s true God. These practices lead people astray into unfaithful acts against God (4:12). Without proper teaching from Israel’s priests, the population of Israel is filled with the “spirit of prostitution” and is blindly led away into a sensuous and selfish worldview that promotes debauchery rather than godliness.
Such worship does not take place at the temple of God, but at syncretistic Baalistic high places scattered throughout the countryside (Hos. 4:13; elsewhere these are mentioned in 1 Kings 14:23; 2 Kings 17:10; Jer. 2:20). Here the people give their sacrifices to God/Baal (they apparently think these are two different names for the same god), enjoy the shade of the trees around these temples, and get involved with the sexual rites practiced at these outdoor places of worship. No doubt many who do this think they are reverencing God, being totally ignorant of what he actually requires in the Torah.
This paragraph ends with God’s decision not to cast the primary blame on the young women (daughters and daughters-in-law) who are involved or who submit themselves to this sexual cultic activity at the Baal temples (Hos. 4:14). Instead, God will punish the men (probably older) who set up, promote, and probably demand this perverse sexual activity. These sexual relations with cult prostitutes are designed to stimulate the fertility gods so that they will send fertility and blessing to the participants, but Hosea concludes that they only leave the people “without understanding” and in “ruin.” Of course, this is not just a sexual perversity, for it is all done in the name of and for the honor of the Canaanite gods.
A. (:11) Lack of Understanding Due to Prostitution and Drinking
“Harlotry, wine, and new wine take away the understanding.”
Grace Emmerson: This section begins and ends with proverbial sayings on the causes and dangers respectively of lack of understanding; the latter, “a people so devoid of understanding comes to grief” (REB), is enlivened with alliteration (ʿam loʾ yabin yillabeṭ). The theme of what follows is not drunkenness per se but the resultant insensitivity which delights in promiscuity. The designation of Israel as “my people” (4:12) highlights the irony of Israel’s search for guidance from a wooden idol. Metaphorical and nonmetaphorical uses of “promiscuity” are interwoven. Unfaithfulness to Yahweh, their covenant God, issues in sexual impurity.
Anthony Petterson: A key contribution to their sinful abandoning of the Lord and giving themselves to promiscuity was their excessive alcohol consumption; they lost their ability to think rationally (v. 11).
Trent Butler: God summarizes the people’s new identity. Prostitution and drinking occupy their thoughts. They enjoyed Baal worship because it brought great physical pleasure. Israel sold out their history and their nation and its future for a good time in the here and now. The people have rejected knowledge. Now their indulgences dull their mental capacities so they can no longer receive knowledge.
B. (:12-13) Illegitimate Worship Associated with Harlotry
David Allen Hubbard: Within the envelope [the parallel proverbial sayings of v. 11 and v. 14e] are three illustrations of Israel’s dementedness.
- First, they seek revelation from wooden objects ( 12). Wood could be a pillar (perhaps with phallic significance) or a sacred tree (cf. v. 13); staff might be smaller pieces of wood to be cast like dice and lots, or a larger rod to be spun and dropped to convey a message by the direction in which it landed – an act of rhabdomancy. In any case magic and even idolatry were involved and drew divine ire (Deut. 18:1–14), for they needed to inquire (Heb. š’l; cf. Judg. 1:1; 2 Sam. 2:1; Ezek. 21:26) of God who alone knew the future, who alone could give oracles (Heb. ngd). Such acts were rejections of true prophecy (cf. 9:7 for its explication).
- Second, the Israelites are so engrossed in idolatry that they are under the sway, not of Yahweh whom they have left (Heb. preposition mittaḥat means ‘from under the authority of’ and is equivalent to mē’āḥǎrêy, literally ‘from [following] after’ in 1:2), but of a spirit whose character causes them to wander wildly into acts of harlotry ( 12c– d). Spirit comes close to describing demonic power and indicates how virtually inescapable Israel’s harlotry with the Baals had become (cf. 4:19; 5:4). Harlotry dots this section of the book and links it tightly to the theme verse (1:2) and the descriptions of Gomer/Israel as harlot in 2:2–13; 3:1–2 (cf. 4:10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18; 5:3, 4).
Their two prime activities were slaying and eating sacrifices (Heb. zbḥ is always used negatively by Hosea to signify the activities of the corrupt cult; cf. 4:14; 8:13; 11:2; 12:12; 13:2) and burning incense and other offerings (on Heb. qṭr, see 2:13; 11:2). The places for these exercises were the elevated sites that seemed closer to the heavens and were shaded by trees which Israel deemed sacred. . .
- Third, one of the rude results (note the therefore of 13e) of the priests’ infidelity to God was the promiscuous sexual conduct of their own daughters and daughters-in-law (the Heb. kallâ, ‘bride’, can describe both ‘daughter’ and ‘daughter-in-law’ who have preserved their virginity until the time of marriage; cf. Wolff, pp. 86–87).9 The lascivious cult had caught them in its clutches, and, under the welcome shade of the trees just described, they engaged in illicit intercourse.
Lloyd Ogilvie: The theme of stubbornness and straying is consistent throughout Hosea 4:12–19. The “spirit of harlotry” leads God’s people astray. It is as if an overwhelming force of evil came upon the people from beyond them, and they were prompted to stray.
- (:12) Substituting Idols for God
“My people consult their wooden idol,
and their diviner’s wand informs them;
For a spirit of harlotry has led them astray,
And they have played the harlot, departing from their God.”
Anthony Petterson: vv. 12-14 – The people have forsaken the Lord and turned to idols. They seek to determine the future in ways that the law prohibits (cf. Dt 18:9-13), and they engage in the sacrificial rituals of foreign nations. This is consistent with the people’s worship of Baal (Hos 2:8, 13, 16-17). The people also give themselves to sexual immorality (4:13). The men bear greater culpability in this, presumably because of the responsibility they have been given, from creation, to lead their wives (v. 14).
- (:13) Sacrificing on the High Places
“They offer sacrifices on the tops of the mountains
And burn incense on the hills, Under oak, poplar, and terebinth,
Because their shade is pleasant.
Therefore your daughters play the harlot,
And your brides commit adultery.”
Duane Garrett: The closing of the poem, that the shade is “good” where they worship, is not an accidental comment but implies that the cults were in some ways truly appealing to the average person. In order to appreciate fully the lament concerning their going to hills and shade trees to offer sacrifices, we need to understand how this activity could be attractive. The “sacrifices” were not simply for the gods but were eaten by human participants. In a beautiful setting in the hills and under trees, the people could experience something that combined a picnic with “sacred mysteries.” Also in these mountain shrines they enjoyed freedom from the restraints of the strict morality imposed by orthodox Yahwism (thus Josiah found it necessary to close down all rural shrines, 2 Kgs 23:8–9). This, combined with a belief that these gods and their rites had the power to insure good crops and healthy births in their flocks and herds, made for a religion as irresistible as it was corrupting. The real tragedy, however, was not merely that these rites led to various kinds of immorality; it was that people went to the shrines and consulted trees and stones with a sense of piety and reverence.
C. (:14a) Liability for Harlotry Assigned to the Men
“I will not punish your daughters when they play the harlot
Or your brides when they commit adultery,
For the men themselves go apart with harlots
And offer sacrifices with temple prostitutes;”
David Thompson: God says I won’t even punish the daughters or the brides because it is the men and the false leaders who are promoting all of this. God’s people were being ruined because the male leadership refused to lead the people into the pure, true, right ways of God.
This is interesting to me because in our social world, generally speaking, men’s sins are treated more leniently than a woman’s sin. But it doesn’t work that way in God’s world. God will hold the men accountable and specifically He will hold the male leadership accountable
D. (:14b) Lack of Understanding Leads to Ruin
“So the people without understanding are ruined.”
James Mays: The final line (v. 14b) returns to the proverbial idiom. In style and vocabulary the line is a general Wisdom saying (cf. Prov. 10.8, 10). But this observation, which uttered independently would sound like a calm, dispassionate analysis of the way life works, in this context takes on the quality of a lament over inevitable doom. A saying of the wise becomes an announcement of doom. The proverb completes the logic of the oracle:
- harlotry takes away the mind ( 11),
- the nation is caught up by a spirit of harlotry ( 12–14a),
- the resulting lack of understanding will lead to ruin (14b).
Robin Routledge: The priests’ failure results in a widespread lack of understanding. The term bîn may apply to discernment generally, though probably refers here to the understanding of who God is and what he requires (cf. 14:9; see also e.g. Isa. 6:9–10; 43:10; 56:11; Jer. 4:22). This is closely related to the failure to acknowledge him (2:8; 4:1, 6). The result of the people’s lack of understanding is ruin (cf. 4:6). The priests have failed to show true leadership; that, though, is no excuse, and the whole people face divine judgment.
H. Ronald Vandermey: Reflecting on the results of the spirit of harlotry on His people, the Lord sighs: “So the people without understanding are ruined” (v. 14). Ruined, literally, “thrown down” (Hebrew, labat), is a word found elsewhere only in Proverbs 10:8, 10, where it describes the inevitable end of a fool who rejects God’s commandments. In light of the scene that has been pictured in these verses, Israel has been “ruined” through her own folly.
IV. (:15-19) REMEDY FOR JUDAH REQUIRES RENOUNCING THE SHAMEFUL CORRUPTION OF ISRAEL
James Mays: The general subject of Israel’s cult as harlotry, the central theme of vv. 4–10 and 11–14, continues. There are clear connections with the particular emphases of the two foregoing passages. An irrational hardening of mind has fallen on Israel. Drunkenness and sex dominate their worship. They are captive to a spirit which drives them toward their fall.
Gary Smith: They are out of control and hopelessly determined to do whatever they want to do. The essential reasons for this hopeless situation are:
(1) The people are spellbound by the idols that join with other forms of Baalism (4:17);
(2) they deeply love the wine and the sexual prostitution at their temples (4:18); and
(3) they are bound up by the adulterous spirit of their day (4:19).
A. (:15-17) Shepherding Counsel
- (:15) Warning to Judah
“Though you, Israel, play the harlot, Do not let Judah become guilty;
Also do not go to Gilgal, Or go up to Beth-aven,
And take the oath: ‘As the LORD lives!’”
M. Daniel Carroll R.: The hope is that Israel’s example will be an object lesson for Judah, so that the people might not repeat Israel’s corruption and avoid similar punishment. . .
What is made plain here is that proclaiming the correct name of God is not the only requirement for worship to be acceptable; more important is the content given that name. If the people believe in and praise a Yahweh of their own creation, whether he is confused with baʿal or is shaped by the reigning nationalistic ideology, he cannot be the true God and worship cannot be authentic. In sum, the religious world of ancient Israel is complex. One must appreciate that syncretism necessarily corrupts faith and distorts their understanding of the person and work of Yahweh.
David Thompson: Gilgal and Beth-aven were two pagan cult sites. In fact, the name “Bethel” means “House of God” and the name “Beth-aven” means “House of Wickedness.” God did not want them going to these false places of evil worship and taking oaths like Israel.
Lloyd Ogilvie: At these sanctuaries the people swear, “As Yahweh lives,” and then enter the sanctuary to become part of the cultic worship. The name of Yahweh was used with syncretistic deceit when the people knew very well that Baal was worshiped there (Jer. 4:2; 5:2).
- (:16-17) Waywardness of Israel Due to Stubbornness
“Since Israel is stubborn Like a stubborn heifer,
Can the LORD now pasture them Like a lamb in a large field?
Ephraim is joined to idols; Let him alone.”
Duane Garrett: The fundamental charge in these verses is that Israel is incorrigible in its evil ways. This is shown (1) in the simile of the stubborn heifer, (2) in their unbreakable attachment to idols, and (3) in their habitual debauchery of drunkenness and promiscuity. A stubborn heifer was a cow that refused to go where her owner led (cf. Jer 31:18). The stubbornness of the people made it impossible for God to give them peace and prosperity. The line “Ephraim is joined to idols” (which implies that Israel has formed a political alliance with idols) could instead be rendered, “Ephraim is spellbound of idols.” The latter interpretation implies that Israel is bewitched by idols, and it is preferable. Following such an interpretation, “Leave him alone!” implies that the nation is in a trance from which no one may arouse them.
James Mays: The cult of Israel’s shrines is to be avoided because those who assemble in them are stubbornly committed to their folly. Like a balky cow which always bucks and plunges in the direction opposite to that in which she is pushed, Israel perversely resists every attempt of Yahweh to guide them. For a similar metaphor, cf. Jeremiah’s ‘untrained calf’ (Jer. 31.18). Hardening of mind and spirit has set in. Yahweh can no longer shepherd his people, leading them to the pleasant and verdant places where pasture is abundant.
David Allen Hubbard: However much God would like to shepherd Israel with his wisdom, it seems he must, because of her continual intransigence, treat her as those dumb animals which will not respond to their master. . .
Ephraim (v. 17), one of Hosea’s favourite designations for Israel, is used here for the first time. Technically, it describes both the most influential tribe in the Northern Kingdom (cf. Josh. 16:5–10 for the land originally allotted to the descendants of this son of Joseph in Gen. 48:1–7) and the hill territory that it occupied, which may have been Hosea’s home. Used by itself or in clear parallelism with Israel, it seems to stand for the whole northern people (cf. 11:1, 3, 8, 9; 12:8)
B. (:18-19) Shameful Conduct Drives Them to Shameful Judgment
“Their liquor gone, They play the harlot continually;
Their rulers dearly love shame.
The wind wraps them in its wings,
And they will be ashamed because of their sacrifices.”
Duane Garrett: The NIV translation of v. 18a implies that the people continued to engage in promiscuity, even when sober and not under the inhibition-removing effects of alcohol. This probably is not correct; the line seems to mean, “When their liquor runs out, they engage prostitutes,” meaning that they drink all they can and then turn to sex.
Trent Butler: God seeks to stop sin so its contagious nature will not infect Judah as it has Israel. Hosea prays that his own people in the nation of Judah will not follow the example of their northern kinsmen. Surely, God will have a remnant of his people who will be faithful and not fall into the Canaanite trap. Gilgal was Israel’s first place of worship after Joshua brought the Israelites across the Jordan River and into the promised land (Josh. 5:9–10). But it was no longer a place holy to the Lord. Neither was Bethel, sarcastically spelled Beth Aven (“house of disaster or of injustice”), in spite of its many connections with the patriarchs (Gen. 28:19). These were not the places God had chosen for his people to worship.
M. Daniel Carroll R.: A “wind” (rûaḥ; GK 8120) confines Israel. This word is the same one translated “spirit” in v.12, but in contrast to those deeply controlling and destructive impulses that are driving the nation, here it denotes the unstoppable force of divine judgment (cf. 13:15). The people’s misdirected sacrifices (4:13; cf. 2:11, 13) cannot secure bounty or protection; they bring only shame and suffering. These offerings will be exposed as useless before the sovereign person of Yahweh, his holy demands, and his powerful actions in history.
John Goldingay: The chapter closes (vv. 18b–19) with a tricolon whose reference to “its shields” (that is, the people who are supposed to be the protectors of the city) begins the transition to the next section, with its challenge to the Ephraimite leadership. These shields have behaved as if they are emotionally attached to shame or slighting (cf. v. 7). The implication of their behavior is that it’s going to take them to this fate. It’s as if they have been bewitched. The whoring spirit that has led the people astray (v. 12), to which Hosea will refer again in 5:4, has bound them up in its wings. He is playing with the fact that rûaḥ also denotes the wind, which (as it were) has wings (Pss. 18:10 [11]; 104:3) that enable it to carry someone away. They will carry the shields to the shame that properly issues from their offering sacrifices to these other deities. They will not merely be ashamed but also shamed.
Robin Routledge: The people are in the grip of false worship and must bear the shameful consequences of their idolatrous sacrifices. Wind may also be an instrument of divine judgment (e.g. 13:15), which, when linked to Israel being swept away, may suggest exile (Ben Zvi 2005: 107–108; cf. Macintosh 1997: 173–174). The people’s sin, which now controls them, will carry them ultimately to destruction.
Duane Garrett: The thrust of this passage is therefore that Judah should not follow Israel into apostasy and promiscuity. The people of Judah should abandon religious shrines and practices of Israel because they had become hopelessly defiled by paganism. The Israelites were like a stubborn cow in their apostasy—entranced by idols, debauched, in love with their cults, but destined to be swept away as by a storm and to be sadly disappointed by the failure of their gods.