God Puts an Adulterous People on Trial
Chapter 4
A Deep Corruption of Morals
1 Hear the word of the Lord,
people of Israel,
for the Lord has decreed an indictment
against the inhabitants of the land.
There is no faithfulness or loyalty,
nor any knowledge of God in the land.
2 Instead, people swear oaths and break them;
they lie, murder, steal, and commit adultery,
with never-ceasing bloodshed.
3 Therefore, the land is in mourning,
and all who dwell in it languish,
including the wild beasts and the birds of the air;
even the fish of the sea are perishing.
My Quarrel Is with You, O Priests
4 But let no one protest
or make accusations;
my quarrel is with you, O priests.
5 You shall stumble in the daylight,
while the prophets will stumble with you at night,
and I will destroy your mother.
6 My people are perishing
for want of knowledge.
Because you have rejected knowledge,
I will reject you as my priests.
And since you have forsaken the law of your God,
I will also reject your children.
7 The more the number of priests increased,
the more they sinned against me,
turning their glory into shame.
8 They feed on the sins of my people;
they are insatiable in their hunger for iniquity.
9 The priests and the people will share the same fate;
I shall punish them for their conduct
and repay them for their deeds.
10 They will eat but never be satisfied;
they will engage in prostitution but never have children,
because they have abandoned the Lord
11 to devote themselves to immorality.
Idolatry and Debauchery
Wine, both old and new,
deprives my people of understanding.
12 They consult a piece of wood for advice,
and their divining rod[a] provides the answers they seek.
For a spirit of promiscuity has led them astray,
and their immorality causes them to forsake their God.
13 They offer sacrifice on the mountaintops
and burn incense on the hills,
beneath oak and poplar and terebinth
because the shade they afford is pleasant.
14 I shall not punish your daughters for becoming prostitutes
or your daughters-in-law for committing adultery.
For your men themselves consort with harlots
and offer sacrifice with temple prostitutes;
a people thus devoid of understanding is doomed.
15 Though you, O Israel, play the whore,
do not allow Judah to incur such guilt.
Do not come to Gilgal
or go up to Beth-aven,
and do not swear, “As the Lord lives!”[b]
16 For Israel is as stubborn as a heifer;
will the Lord now feed them
like lambs in a broad meadow?
17 Ephraim has associated with idols;
let them alone.
18 When their drinking binge has ended,
they indulge in sexual orgies,
preferring lewdness to their glory.
19 The wind has carried them off in its wings,
and their sacrifices will only bring them shame.
Footnotes
- Hosea 4:12 Piece of wood . . . divining rod: i.e., an idol used to foretell the future.
- Hosea 4:15 A scribe from the land of Judah inserted verse 15 at this point in order to put his fellow citizens, likewise, on guard. Gilgal was in fact a place of worship near Jericho (see 1 Sam 11:15), where sacrifice was undoubtedly still being offered. Beth-aven (“House of wickedness”) is a sarcastic deformation of Bethel (“House of God”), indicating that the worship offered at this sanctuary was corrupt. In the eyes of the editor, who writes after Josiah’s reform of 622 B.C., all the high places apart from Jerusalem were already corrupt. In fact, Hosea is addressing Ephraim, that is, the principal tribe of the northern kingdom, and therefore the entire kingdom.