Hosea 4 Study Notes

4:1-5:15 This section is centered on the commands in 4:15. Three repetitions of indictment plus judgment both precede and follow these commands.

4:1-3 The prophetic call to hear the word of the Lord is found twenty-nine times in the OT (13 times in Jeremiah, 6 times in Ezekiel, 4 times in Isaiah, 3 times in 1 and 2 Kings), but only twice in the Minor Prophets—here and in Amos 7:16. This central indictment section begins with a summary of the Lord’s charges and a call to the true people (lit “sons”) of Israel to recognize the moral and spiritual corruption of the rest of their countrymen who have abandoned their God and forfeited their right to be called his people. These adulterous inhabitants have abandoned: (1) truth or integrity, the quality of being reliable and genuine; (2) faithful love or kindness and mercy to friends and associates; and (3) the knowledge of God. They had ceased to care about knowing him or the truth about him (Rm 1:18-32). As a result they were violating the Ten Commandments (Hs 4:2) and suffering the consequences (v. 3).

4:4-7 The common people are identified as guilty, but especially guilty were the priests who were responsible for teaching the people. Leaders of God’s people who shirk or violate that responsibility invite special punishment (Mal 2:1-9; Mt 18:6; Jms 3:1).

4:8 The term for sin can also mean “sin offering,” which the priests were to eat (Lv 6:25-26). The priests were using Israel’s sin and the sacrificial system for their own advantage.

4:9-10 The fertility religion that had infected apostate Israel, even the priesthood, was about prosperity, but the Lord would see to it that the opposite results occurred. They would not multiply. More references to promiscuity occur in vv. 10-15,18 than anywhere else in the book (10 of the 22 times in Hosea).

4:11 This proverb concludes the section.

4:12-13 These verses deal with the spirit of promiscuity in Israel.

4:14 God’s statement that he would not punish your daughters must be understood as a rhetorical way of saying that God placed heavier blame on the men who supported the vile practice of cult prostitution. All would suffer when God brought judgment against Israel.

4:15 This verse contains the first of three exhortations (cp. 5:1,8) that divide this section into three warnings. Although the warnings are mainly directed against Israel, Judah was also in danger of following Israel in apostasy and punishment (5:5,10,12-14). Although there was a Benjaminite city Beth-aven (Jos 18:12), Hosea used it as a derogatory term for Bethel, which meant “house of God” (Hs 5:8; 10:5; cp. “Aven” in 10:8; Am 1:5). Beth-aven meant “house of disaster, wickedness, nothingness, or idolatry.” Another Hebrew word with the same consonants as ‘aven but different vowels meant “wealth, strength” (Hs 12:3,8). Gilgal and Bethel had become centers of Israelite apostate religion (Am 5:5). The name of God continued to be used, but its attachment to idolatry made its utterance not only hypocritical but blasphemous. The Hebrew verb ‘asham (“be guilty”) occurs here for the first of five times in the book (Hs 5:15; 10:2; 13:1,16), more than in any other book except Leviticus (11 times). The related noun usually meaning “guilt/restitution offering” occurs an additional forty-six times in the OT, mostly in Leviticus. “Guilty” is the legal condition of unpunished lawbreakers regardless of their emotional state, although shame was the appropriate emotional response (Ezr 9:6).

4:16 Israel was deaf and blind to instruction.

4:17 This verse has the first of thirty-seven references to Ephraim in Hosea, more than in any other book (185 times in the OT). The name was given to Joseph’s second son, then to the tribe he fathered, then to the northern hill country where they lived. It was popularly derived from the Hebrew word parah, “be fruitful” (Gn 41:52), a verb used ironically in Hs 13:15. “Fruitful” Ephraim would no longer be fruitful because of their foolish pursuit of fruitless pagan fertility rites.

4:18 The leaders moved back and forth from one disgraceful activity to another.

4:19 Because of Israel’s adulterous idolatry, arrogance, and stubbornness, they were warned that God would blow them away as with a whirlwind, the first of three metaphors used in this section to make vivid the coming judgment. He would also eat away at them like rot or a moth (5:12) and tear them to pieces like a lion (5:14).