Redeeming Love and Israel's Waiting Return

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, viz. , the destruction of the kingdom and rejection of the people; and this is done with a repeated side-glance 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. The first section, in which the prophet demonstrates the necessity for judgment, by exposing the sins and follies of Israel, is divided into two parts by the similar openings, “Hear the word of the Lord” in Hos 4:1, and “Hear ye this” in Hos 5:1.

The distinction between the two halves is, that in ch. 4 the reproof of their sins passes from Israel as a whole, to the sins of the priests in particular; whilst in Hos 5:1-15 it passes from the ruin of the priesthood to the depravity of the whole nation, and announces the judgment of devastation upon Ephraim, and then closes in Hos 6:1-3 with a command to return to the Lord.

The contents of the two chapters, however, are so arranged, that it is difficult to divide them into strophes. Hos 4:1-5 form the first strophe, and contain, so to speak, the theme and the sum and substance of the whole of the following threatening of punishment and judgment. Hos 4:1. “Hear the word of Jehovah, ye sons of Israel! for Jehovah has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land; for there is no truth, and no love, and no knowledge of God in the land.

” Israel of the ten tribes is here addressed, as Hos 4:15 clearly shows. The Lord has a controversy with it, has to accuse and judge it (cf. Mic 6:2), because truth, love, and the knowledge of God have vanished from the land. 'Emeth and chesed are frequently associated, not merely as divine attributes, but also as human virtues. They are used here in the latter sense, as in Pro 3:3.

“There is no 'ĕmeth , i. e. , no truthfulness, either in speech or action, no one trusting another any more” (cf. Jer 9:3-4). Chesed is not human love generally, but love to inferiors, and to those who need help or compassionate love. Truth and love are mutually conditions, the one of the other. “Truth cannot be sustained without mercy; and mercy without truth makes men negligent; so that the one ought to be mingled with the other” (Jerome).

They both have their roots in the knowledge of God, of which they are the fruit (Jer 22:16; Isa 11:9); for the knowledge of God is not merely “an acquaintance with His nature and will” (Hitzig), but knowledge of the love, faithfulness, and compassion of God, resting upon the experience of the heart. Such knowledge not only produces fear of God, but also love and truthfulness towards brethren (cf.

Eph 4:32; Col 3:12.) Where this is wanting, injustice gains the upper hand.

Hos 4:2 “Swearing, and lying, and murdering, and stealing, and committing adultery; they break in, and blood reaches to blood. ” The enumeration of the prevailing sins and crimes commences with infin. absoll. , to set forth the acts referred to as such with the greater emphasis. 'Alâh , to swear, in combination with kichēsh , signifies false swearing (= אלוה שׁוא in Hos 10:4; compare the similar passage in Jer 7:9); but we must not on that account take kichēsh as subordinate to 'âlâh , or connect them together, so as to form one idea.

Swearing refers to the breach of the second commandment, stealing to that of the eighth; and the infinitives which follow enumerate the sins against the fifth, the seventh, and the sixth commandments. With pârâtsū the address passes into the finite tense (Luther follows the lxx and Vulg. , and connects it with what precedes; but this is a mistake). The perfects, pârâtsū and nâgâ‛ū , are not preterites, but express a completed act, reaching from the past into the present.

Pârats to tear, to break, signifies in this instance a violent breaking in upon others, for the purpose of robbery and murder, “ grassari as פריצים, i. e. , as murderers and robbers” (Hitzig), whereby one bloody deed immediately followed another (Eze 18:10). Dâmı̄m : blood shed with violence, a bloody deed, a capital crime.

Hos 4:3 These crimes bring the land to ruin. Hos 4:3. “Therefore the land mourns, and every dweller therein, of beasts of the field and birds of the heaven, wastes away; and even the fishes of the sea perish. ” These words affirm not only that the inanimate creation suffers in consequence of the sins and crimes of men, but that the moral depravity of men causes the physical destruction of all other creatures.

As God has given to man the dominion over all beasts, and over all the earth, that he may use it for the glory of God; so does He punish the wickedness of men by pestilences, or by the devastation of the earth. The mourning of the earth and the wasting away of the animals are the natural result of the want of rain and the great drought that ensues, such as was the case in the time of Ahab throughout the kingdom of the ten tribes (1Ki 17:18), and judging from Amo 1:2; Amo 8:8, may have occurred repeatedly with the continued idolatry of the people.

The verbs are not futures, in which case the punishment would be only threatened, but aorists, expressing what has already happened, and will continue still. כּל־יושׁב בּהּ (every dweller therein): these are not the men, but the animals, as the further definition בּחיּה וגו shows. ב is used in the enumeration of the individuals, as in Gen 7:21; Gen 9:10. The fishes are mentioned last, and introduced with the emphasizing וגם, to show that the drought would prevail to such an extent, that even lakes and other waters would be dried up.

האסף, to be collected, to be taken away, to disappear or perish, as in Isa 16:10; Isa 60:20; Jer 48:33.

Hos 4:4 Notwithstanding the outburst of the divine judgments, the people prove themselves to be incorrigible in their sins. Hos 4:4. “Only let no man reason, and let no man punish; yet thy people are like priest-strivers. ” אך is to be explained from the tacit antithesis, that with much depravity there would be much to punish; but this would be useless. The first clause contains a desperatae nequitiae argumentum .

The notion that the second 'ı̄sh is to be taken as an object, is decidedly to be rejected, since it cannot be defended either from the expression אישׁ בּאישׁ in Isa 3:5, or by referring to Amo 2:15, and does not yield any meaning at all in harmony with the second half of the verse. For there is no need to prove that it does not mean, “Every one who has a priest blames the priest instead of himself when any misfortune happens to him,” as Hitzig supposes, since עם signifies the nation, and not an individual.

ועמּך is attached adversatively, giving the reason for the previous thought in the sense of “since thy people,” or simply “thy people are surely like those who dispute with the priest. ” The unusual expression, priest-disputers, equivalent to quarrellers with the priest, an analogous expression to boundary-movers in Hos 5:10, may be explained, as Luther, and Grotius, and others suppose, from the law laid down in Deu 17:12-13, according to which every law-suit was to be ultimately decided by the priest and judge as the supreme tribunal, and in which, whoever presumes to resist the verdict of this tribunal, is threatened with the punishment of death.

The meaning is, that the nation resembled those who are described in the law as rebels against the priest (Hengstenberg, Dissertations on Pentateuch , vol. 1. p. 112, translation). The suffix “thy nation” does not refer to the prophet, but to the sons of Israel, the sum total of whom constituted their nation, which is directly addressed in the following verse.