13 They sacrifice on the tops of the mountains, And burn incense on the hills, under oaks and poplars and terebinths, Because its shade is good. Therefore your daughters play the prostitute, And your brides commit adultery.
For they shall be ashamed of the oaks which you have desired, And you shall be confounded for the gardens that you have chosen.
Moreover Yahweh said to me in the days of Josiah the king, Have you seen that which backsliding Israel has done? she is gone up on every high mountain and under every green tree, and there has played the prostitute.
You shall know that I am Yahweh, when their slain men shall be among their idols round about their altars, on every high hill, on all the tops of the mountains, and under every green tree, and under every thick oak, the places where they offered sweet savor to all their idols.
Therefore thus says Yahweh: 'Your wife shall be a prostitute in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be divided by line; and you yourself shall die in a land that is unclean, and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of his land.'"
Now therefore the sword will never depart from your house, because you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.' This is what Yahweh says: 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbor, and he will lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.'"
you who inflame yourselves among the oaks, under every green tree; who kill the children in the valleys, under the clefts of the rocks?
On a high and lofty mountain have you set your bed; there also you went up to offer sacrifice.
Only acknowledge your iniquity, that you have transgressed against Yahweh your God, and have scattered your ways to the strangers under every green tree, and you have not obeyed my voice, says Yahweh.
You took of your garments, and made for yourselves high places decked with various colors, and played the prostitute on them: [the like things] shall not come, neither shall it be [so].
For when I had brought them into the land, which I swore to give to them, then they saw every high hill, and every thick tree, and they offered there their sacrifices, and there they presented the provocation of their offering; there also they made their sweet savor, and they poured out there their drink-offerings. Then I said to them, What means the high place whereunto you go? So the name of it is called Bamah to this day.
I will visit on her the days of the Baals, To which she burned incense, When she decked herself with her earrings and her jewels, And went after her lovers, And forgot me," says Yahweh.
and traded the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed animals, and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to uncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonored among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason, God gave them up to vile passions. For their women changed the natural function into that which is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural function of the woman, burned in their lust toward one another, men doing what is inappropriate with men, and receiving in themselves the due penalty of their error. Even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting;
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Hosea 4
Commentary on Hosea 4 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 4
Prophets were sent to be reprovers, to tell people of their faults, and to warn them of the judgments of God, to which by sin they exposed themselves; so the prophet is employed in this and the following chapters. He is here, as counsel for the King of kings, opening an indictment against the people of Israel, and labouring to convince them of sin, and of their misery and danger because of sin, that he might prevail with them to repent and reform.
Hsa 4:1-5
Here is,
Hsa 4:6-11
God is here proceeding in his controversy both with the priests and with the people. The people were as those that strove with the priests (v. 4) when they had priests that did their duty; but the generality of them lived in the neglect of their duty, and here is a word for those priests, and for the people that love to have it so, Jer. 5:31. And it is observable here how the punishment answers to the sin, and how, for the justifying of his own proceedings, God sets the one over-against the other.
Hsa 4:12-19
In these verses we have, as before,