Hosea 9:4

4 They shall not offer wine to the Lord, and they shall not please him. The sacrifices of them be as bread of mourners; all that shall eat it shall be defouled. For the bread of them is to the life of them; they shall not enter into the house of the Lord. (They shall not offer wine to the Lord, and they shall not please him. Their sacrifices be like the bread of mourners; all who shall eat it shall be defiled. For their bread shall only be for their life, or for their sustenance; they shall not enter into the House of the Lord with it.)

Hosea 9:4 Meaning and Commentary

Hosea 9:4

They shall not offer wine [offerings] to the Lord
This is either a threatening of the cessation of sacrifices, being carried into Assyria, a strange land, where it was not lawful to offer sacrifice, there being no temple nor altar to offer in or at; and so as they would not offer to the Lord when they should, now they shall not if they would: or this respects not, the future time of their exile, but their present time now, as Kimchi observes; and so is a reproof of their present sacrifices, which are forbidden to be observed; because they were offered not in faith, nor in sincerity, but hypocritically, and before their calves: besides, the future tease is sometimes put for the present; and this way goes Schmidt; neither shall their sacrifices be pleasing unto him;
unto the Lord, if they were offered; and is a reason why they should not, because unacceptable to him, and that for the reasons before mentioned: their sacrifices [shall be] unto them as the bread of mourners: all
that eat thereof [shall be] polluted;
as all that ate of the bread of such who were mourning for their dead, that partook of their funeral feasts, or ate bread with them at any time during their mourning, were defiled thereby, according to the Levitical law, and were unqualified for service, ( Leviticus 21:1 ) ( Deuteronomy 26:14 ) ; so the sacrifices of these people being offered up with a wicked mind instead of atoning for their sins, more and more defiled them; and, instead of being acceptable to God, were abominable to him: for their bread for their soul shall not come into the house of the
Lord;
in the captivity there was no house of the Lord for them to bring it into; and, when in their own land, they did not bring their offerings to the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, as they should have done, but offered them before their calves at Dan and Bethel; and which is the thing complained of, that the bread for their souls, that is, the offerings accompanied with the "minchah", or bread offering, for the expiation of the sins of their souls, were not brought into the house of the Lord (the future for the present); or else, this being the case, their sacrifices were reckoned by the Lord as no other than common bread, which they ate for the sustenance of their lives.

Hosea 9:4 In-Context

2 The cornfloor and presser shall not feed them, and wine shall lie (down) to them. (But soon the threshing floor and the winepress shall not feed them, and the wine shall fail before them.)
3 They shall not dwell in the land of the Lord. Ephraim turned again in to Egypt, and ate defouled thing among Assyrians. (They shall not live in the land of the Lord. Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and shall eat defiled things among the Assyrians.)
4 They shall not offer wine to the Lord, and they shall not please him. The sacrifices of them be as bread of mourners; all that shall eat it shall be defouled. For the bread of them is to the life of them; they shall not enter into the house of the Lord. (They shall not offer wine to the Lord, and they shall not please him. Their sacrifices be like the bread of mourners; all who shall eat it shall be defiled. For their bread shall only be for their life, or for their sustenance; they shall not enter into the House of the Lord with it.)
5 What shall ye do in the solemn day, in the day of the feast of the Lord? (What shall ye do on the solemn day, yea, on the feast day of the Lord?)
6 For lo! they be gone out from destroying. Egypt shall gather them together, Memphis shall bury them. A nettle shall inherit the desirable silver of them, a clote shall be in the tabernacles of them (Nettles shall inherit their treasures of silver, thorns shall grow in their tents).
Copyright © 2001 by Terence P. Noble. For personal use only.