Hosea 4:1-19--The LORD Accuses Israel

Hosea 4
English Standard Version

The LORD Accuses Israel
4 Hear the word of the LORD, O children of Israel,
    for the LORD has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land.
There is no faithfulness or steadfast love,
    and no knowledge of God in the land;
2 there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery;
    they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.
3 Therefore the land mourns,
    and all who dwell in it languish,
and also the beasts of the field
    and the birds of the heavens,
    and even the fish of the sea are taken away.

4 Yet let no one contend,
    and let none accuse,
    for with you is my contention, O priest.
5 You shall stumble by day;
    the prophet also shall stumble with you by night;
    and I will destroy your mother.
6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge;
    because you have rejected knowledge,
    I reject you from being a priest to me.
And since you have forgotten the law of your God,
    I also will forget your children.

7 The more they increased,
    the more they sinned against me;
    I will change their glory into shame.
8 They feed on the sin of my people;
    they are greedy for their iniquity.
9 And it shall be like people, like priest;
    I will punish them for their ways
    and repay them for their deeds.
10 They shall eat, but not be satisfied;
    they shall play the whore, but not multiply,
because they have forsaken the LORD
    to cherish 11 whoredom, wine, and new wine,
    which take away the understanding.
12 My people inquire of a piece of wood,
    and their walking staff gives them oracles.
For a spirit of whoredom has led them astray,
    and they have left their God to play the whore.
13 They sacrifice on the tops of the mountains
    and burn offerings on the hills,
under oak, poplar, and terebinth,
    because their shade is good.
Therefore your daughters play the whore,
    and your brides commit adultery.
14 I will not punish your daughters when they play the whore,
    nor your brides when they commit adultery;
for the men themselves go aside with prostitutes
    and sacrifice with cult prostitutes,
and a people without understanding shall come to ruin.

15 Though you play the whore, O Israel,
    let not Judah become guilty.
Enter not into Gilgal,
    nor go up to Beth-aven,
    and swear not, “As the LORD lives.”
16 Like a stubborn heifer,
    Israel is stubborn;
can the LORD now feed them
    like a lamb in a broad pasture?

17 Ephraim is joined to idols;
    leave him alone.
18 When their drink is gone, they give themselves to whoring;
    their rulers dearly love shame.
19 A wind has wrapped them in its wings,
    and they shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices.

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The LORD lays out the charges of how the children of Israel.  They have been unfaithful, lack the covenant love (often translated steadfast love) which the LORD has for them, and they no longer even know who God is because they they have been chasing after idols and taught their children to to do the same for so long they no longer know about the God who redeemed them from slavery from Egypt.

​It is clear that they have no knowledge of God by their words and actions.  "There is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery;  they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed."  Does that not describe the way we normally think of the godless people of the world, and yet, the LORD is describing the children of Israel.  We had better expectations of them because of the special revelation they had received in the form of the Law and the Prophets and the Writings (the entire Jewish Scriptures that they had received up to this point).

Even the Land suffers because of the sin of the people.  It grieves and mourns for the curse that it is under, even though the people of the land do not mourn or recognize the curse they are under.  Their sin affects everything from the produce of the land to the wild animals of all kinds--land animals, birds and fish.  All are affected by the sin of the people and all of these are blessed by the people's obedience.  When the children of Israel obey and live in covenant with the LORD, the whole world benefits from that.  When Israel rejects her covenant with the LORD, the whole world suffers because of it.

The LORD directs his accusations directly at the feet of the priests and priestesses of the idols the people worshiped and the false prophets that were part of that system of idolatry.  He is not speaking to the Aaronic priests or the true prophets that He conveyed His divine revelation to at this point (it will become clear later in the passage that He is speaking to the northern kingdom at this point, and the entire tribe of Levi left to go to the southern kingdom of Judah when the northern kingdom refused its people access to travel to the southern kingdom to worship in the Temple and made a version of the Temple for themselves which the women in John 4 references when she asks Jesus about the proper place for the Samaritans to worship the LORD--on the mountain in Samaria or on the mountain in Jerusalem).  The LORD lays the problems squarely at the feet of those who have become the spiritual leaders of the people that are themselves in darkness and without sight or knowledge.  They are blind guides sometimes leading the people astray out of ignorance, and other times leading the people in high-handed sins of rebellion, yet the LORD condemns them because if they want to be priests then they should know their job is to know the LORD's Law and covenant and keep themselves and the people holy.  Instead, they have perverted what it means to be a priest or a prophet and the LORD will destroy them and leave them without children to follow in their footsteps.  That should be enough to make the people think twice about following their lead, but the people will continue to follow after their idols and will not seek the knowledge or wisdom that comes from the LORD's true priests and prophets.


​The more the people increased, the more their sin increased in quality and quantity.  It was almost a competition to see who could be more wicked.  The LORD will have to shame them because they feel no shame from their conscience for what they have done or become.  He will remove their glory and make them despised among the nations.  Even the Gentiles will see their vile nature and wish for the LORD to judge them.  The nations will gladly be the LORD's agents of judgment and justice against the people who bear His holy Name.  When that day of reckoning comes, the LORD will make no distinction between the common people, the king, and the priest.  All of them look and act the same to Him and are deserving of the same judgment.  They will all die by the sword, by pestilence, or be taken into captivity where they will most likely die in a foreign land (very few were young enough to remember the Land as it was before the Exile and return to see it rebuilt to just a shadow of what it originally was).

God sees the Hedonism that His people have embraced, and He promises that part of the curse is that they will seek pleasure, but they will not find it.  They will try to find pleasure in food, drink, and sex, but will find pleasure in none of it--it will only lead to a deeper, darker feeling of emptiness and moral depravity.  They will look to the idols they worship for answers and meaning, but will find none because those idols are nothing more than lifeless blocks of wood, stone, and metal that can neither hear nor answer the prayers of the people  Only the Living God can do that.  They will pretend to hear their "gods" telling them to do what their wicked hearts want to do.  They will openly engage in sexual perversion and give their daughters over to be a part of the sexual sin that accompanied the worship of these idols.

The LORD says He will hold the men who should be the spiritual leaders and protectors of their family and nation responsible for the rampant adultery and prostitution.  There would be no prostitution if the men did not seek to have relationship with prostitutes.  Where there is no demand, there will be no supply.  The same for adultery--there would be no adultery if no man was willing to break the vows he made with his wife or take another man's wife as his own.    The LORD holds the men responsible for the spiritual and sexual purity of their families and communities and to put an end to these detestable practices.  Yet, men and women, young and old alike will be punished.  Though the women are not held responsible, they will still suffer for the sin the was allowed to happen.

The LORD has mostly been addressing the Northern Ten Tribes at this point, but He does not completely omit the Southern kingdom of Judah either.  They need to watch out that they do not become like their brothers to the north, or they too will become just like them.  Judah is warned to avoid travelling to Israel so they do not get caught up in the judgment that is coming upon the northern tribes.  They are not to join them in their idolatry or sexual perversion, nor should they seek to model themselves after the kings, priests, or prophets of the north unless they want to enter into similar judgment (which they will--they will not heed the LORD's warning and will become even more evil than their brothers to the north and even the Levites and Aaronic priests will be corrupted by the same kinds of sin as we see the LORD talking about here).  The kings who are descended from David will not be men after God's own heart and they will not be shepherds to care for and protect the people--they will seeks to acquire power and wealth for themselves, but in the end they will become poor and powerless and go into exile just like all the rest of the people.