Hosea 4 Study Notes

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).