Hosea 4:4-8

The religious leaders are chiefly responsible for the sins of the people, Hosea 4:4-8.

Hosea 4:4, as it stands now, offers considerable difficulties to the interpreter, and has been variously explained.

Yet let no man strive… reprove In 1-3 the prophet has condemned the people, in 5ff. he accuses the priests, with these facts in mind we must seek for an interpretation of 4. The verse seems to mark the transition between the two sections. It is best interpreted as the utterance of the prophet, in a sense defending the people, who are to be pitied more than blamed. The words appear to be addressed partly to the speaker himself, the prophet, as if he desired to correct the harsh judgment uttered in 1, 2, partly to the people, who in the presence of the serious calamity described in 3 would accuse one another of being responsible for it. In the latter part of 4 he begins to point out where the real trouble lies.

Thy people are as they that strive with the Priest If this is the original reading the suggested interpretation of 4a cannot be correct, for here the people are again severely condemned. Following the present text, Henderson and others interpret the verse as meaning that the striving among the people is ordered by Jehovah to cease since “all reproof on the part of their friends and neighbors generally would prove fruitless, seeing they had reached a degree of hardihood which was equalled by the contumacy of those who refused to obey the priest when he gave judgments in the name of the Lord (Deuteronomy 17:12).” A similar comparison is found in Hosea 5:10. Others interpret 4a as spoken by the people, who are out of patience with the prophet and desire his denunciations and rebukes to cease; for this they are condemned by the prophet in 4b. There are serious doubts, however, concerning the accuracy of the text of 4b. (1) In Hosea 4:6 the priests are addressed; 5 is most naturally interpreted as addressed to the same. If so, it is strange that in or preceding 5 the priests are not mentioned as being addressed directly. (2) In view of the fierce denunciation of the priesthood in Hosea 4:6, would it not seem strange in Hosea to demand of the people obedience to priestly instruction, and that he should consider disobedience the limit of transgression? The trouble was that the people followed the example and instruction of the priests too willingly. (3) Hosea opposed the priests more vehemently than anyone else in the nation. Is it natural to suppose that he should hold up his own prophetic attitude as the culmination of apostasy? To relieve the difficulty various emendations have been suggested, all based more or less upon the unvocalized text and upon LXX. The most acceptable of these seems that of Beck, followed by G.A. Smith and others: “For my people are as their priestlings. O priest…” Hosea 4:4 and the opening words of Hosea 4:5 would then read, “Let none find fault and none upbraid, for my people are but as their priestlings. O priest, thou shalt stumble…” This emendation requires but slight alterations in the consonantal text.

From the people (4a), for whom the prophet has great sympathy, he turns to denounce the religious leaders (4b ff.). On priestlings, see on Hosea 10:5. Marti rejects 5, 6a as “foreign to the original context,” but his reasons are not convincing.

Fall R.V., “stumble.” Not with reference to sin, but punishment; equivalent to perish (Hosea 14:1).

In the day… night Both day and night; at all times. The night is mentioned with the prophet, since dreams and night visions (Numbers 12:6; Zechariah 1:8) form a very important means of prophetic revelation; the priest’s work is chiefly in the daytime.

Prophet Not spiritually minded prophets like Amos and Hosea, nor prophets of foreign deities, but mercenary prophets, who prophesied from low, selfish motives (Micah 3:11; compare Amos 7:12; 1 Kings 22:6; Isaiah 28:7). Prophets and priests who have become misleaders shall fall together.

Thy mother In Hosea 2:2, where the Israelites are addressed, the whole nation. In Psalms 149:2, the inhabitants of Jerusalem are called children of Zion (compare 2 Samuel 20:19). In these passages the mother is the nation or city, of which the inhabitants are the children. The priests who are here addressed are the constituent parts of the priestly order; the individual priests might be called its children; thy mother is therefore probably the priestly order or guild.

Hosea 4:6 continues the condemnation of the priests.

My people are destroyed A prophetic perfect. The event is still future, but the prophet is so sure of its occurrence that he pictures it as already present. The people must suffer for their sins, though these are due largely to the neglectfulness of priest and prophet.

For lack of knowledge Of Jehovah; the secret of the people’s sinfulness. For this lack the priests are responsible (see on Hosea 2:20).

Thou The priest; the pronoun is emphatic in Hebrew.

Knowledge Has the article in Hebrew; a specific kind of knowledge, of Jehovah and his will, of which the priests were the custodians (Ezekiel 44:23).

Rejected They have failed to be guided by it and to give proper instruction in it. Jehovah can use them no longer; they shall cease to be his priests. The latter part of Hosea 4:6 repeats the thought for the sake of emphasis.

Forgotten… forget Practically equivalent to reject; for as Jehovah’s knowing has an ethical aspect (see on Amos 3:2), so his forgetting.

Law of thy God Parallel with knowledge in the first part. The law supplies the knowledge. That written laws existed in Hosea’s time is beyond doubt (Hosea 8:12); but the term law (Hebrews torah) in prophetic literature is not limited to written law or to law in the narrow sense of that term; frequently it is synonymous with word (Isaiah 1:10; Isaiah 2:3), where in margin R.V. it is rendered “teaching,” or “instruction.” Like many theological terms, the word has a history, and in the course of that history it did not retain at all times the same meaning. In the postexilic period it became the technical term for the Five Books of Moses, or Pentateuch. From the occurrence of the word in various Old Testament books it has been assumed that this fact in itself proves conclusively the existence of the Pentateuch in complete written form at the time these books were written. If law and Pentateuch were always identical this would be valid reasoning, but there are many passages throughout the Old Testament in which the word does not refer to the Pentateuch. The noun comes probably though this is questioned by some from a verb to throw, that is, arrows; it is used also of the casting of lots. The casting of lots was one primitive way of determining the will of the deity (Ezekiel 21:21). From this usage of the verb the noun received its primary significance: every kind of instruction received from the deity by the casting of the lot. When a higher stage of communion with God was attained the noun came to denote every revelation received from God by prophet or priest, whatever the means of communication. When these expressions of the divine will were collected and put in writing, at first probably in small collections, the separate items and the entire collection were called Torah Law. At this stage the term came to be restricted to legal requirements. Only in a more advanced stage, when it was seen that practically all Hebrew law was contained in the Pentateuch, the term was employed to designate that group of books. (Compare Journal of Biblical Literature, xxiv, part i, pp. 1-16.) The significance of the word in any given passage must be determined very largely from the context. Here it is used of written law as well as of instruction otherwise received and given.

Thy children The individual members of the priestly guild (Hosea 4:5).