Hosea 4 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
~750-725 BC, in the decline of the northern kingdom before Assyria destroyed it in 722 BC
Location
The northern kingdom of Israel, with its shrines at Bethel and Gilgal and its hilltop worship sites
Audience
Israelites in the north, especially the priests who ran the sanctuaries
Situation
God brings a formal legal charge against the land: no faithfulness, no kindness, no knowledge of God, and instead swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and adultery. The priests come in for the sharpest blame, because they profit when people bring more sin offerings.
Key Background
The chapter is shaped as a courtroom complaint, a form Israelite prophets borrowed from real legal practice where a wronged party summoned the offender and listed the breaches. Worship on wooded hilltops involved fertility rites tied to Baal, the storm and crop god, in which sexual acts were thought to prompt the land to produce. Knowledge of God in Hosea does not mean information, it means the practical loyalty a covenant partner owes, so a priesthood that failed to teach it had failed at its whole job.
Listen to what Yahweh is saying, people of Israel — Yahweh has a to bring against everyone living in this land: There is no no and no of anywhere in the land.
Instead — cursing, lying, murder, stealing, and adultery. They've every and
Because of this, the land itself is — everything living in it is wasting away: the wild animals, the birds in the sky, even the fish in the sea are disappearing.
But let no one point fingers, let no one accuse — because my priest, is with you.
You by day, and the prophet stumbles with you by night — and I will destroy
My people are being destroyed for lack of Because you rejected I reject you from serving as my priest. Because you forgot the of your God, I will forget your children too.
The more priests there were, the more they failed me. They traded their for something disgraceful.
They feed on the of my people and crave their
And it will be the same for priest as for people — I will punish them for their ways and them for what they've done.
They will eat but never be full. They will other but never have children — because they abandoned Yahweh to give themselves to other gods.
and the
My people ask a of for answers and expect a stick to tell them the future. A of has led them astray — they have the abandoning their God.
On the they make their sacrifices, and on the hills they burn their offerings — under oak, poplar, and terebinth, because the shade is so pleasant. That is why your daughters their and your daughters-in-law commit adultery.
I will not punish your daughters for selling their bodies or your daughters-in-law for their adultery, because the men themselves go off with prostitutes and offer sacrifices with the at the A people without will be ruined.
Even if you, Israel, play the unfaithful lover — don't let Judah become guilty too. Don't go to don't go up to and don't swear, 'As Yahweh lives.'
Israel is as as a — so how can Yahweh them like a lamb in an open meadow?
is to his — leave him alone.
When their drinking is done, they to Their rulers dearly love their
A has them in its and their sacrifices will leave them