This chapter exposes Israel's sins more particularly than we have seen so far. The Northern Kingdom had broken covenant with Yahweh. Her priest's were particularly guilty, but the idolatrous citizens also deserved divine judgment, and they would receive it.
The Lord brought a legal charge against the Israelites for breaking the Mosaic Covenant. Again the literary form of this section is a legal confrontation (Heb. rib, cf. 2:2). The Lord stated His charges against Israel in 4:1-3 and then developed these charges in reverse order.
4:1 Hosea called on the Israelites to listen to a word from Yahweh because He was charging them with serious crimes. Yahweh was taking the Israelites to court. The basic accusation is that there was no faithfulness (truth, trustworthiness), kindness (loyalty, Heb. hesed), or (evidence of) knowledge of God in the land. The Israelites failed to acknowledge Yahweh as their God (cf. 2:20). These were all things that God had ordered His people to pursue when He covenanted with them at Sinai.
4:2 Instead of these virtues, He observed swearing (cursing others), deception, murder, stealing, adultery, violence, and continual bloodshed. These were things He had forbidden in His covenant. He identified violations of at least five of the Ten Commandments (numbers 3, 9, 6, 8, and 7). Violent crimes were so common that they seemed to follow one another without interruption.
4:3 Therefore God was not blessing Israel but was bringing curses on the land so every part of the Northern Kingdom suffered, every living thing. Drought seems to be the particular form of chastisement in view (cf. Lev. 26:19; Deut. 28:23-24).
In this pericope God addressed the Israelites as a whole but identified sins of their priests in particular.
4:4 Israel's guilt was so clear that the Lord forbade the people from denying His charge against them. As judge, He silenced them in His court. In defying Him they were like witnesses who brazenly defied their authority on earth, the priest.
4:5 Because of this rebellion the people would have great difficulty and would stumble as they walked through life. Their false prophets would also err. Both types of spiritual leaders, priests and prophets, were guilty before God. The Lord also promised to destroy the mother of the Israelites, probably another reference to the nation as a whole (cf. 2:2).
4:6 God would destroy the Israelites because of their lack of knowledge of Himself. That is, they failed to acknowledge Him as their God (cf. v. 1). God would reject them as His priests on the earth, whose task it was to mediate the knowledge of God to the nations (Exod. 19:6), because they rejected the knowledge that He gave them in His law. He would abandon (forget) their children because they had abandoned (forgotten) His law.
4:7 God had blessed the Israelites by increasing their numbers, but their response to this blessing had been to increase their sinning against Him. Consequently He would change their glory, a large population (or perhaps Yahweh Himself), into shame; He would reduce their numbers (and withdraw from them).
4:8 Israel's priests were feeding on the sin offerings that the people brought to their pagan shrines. Yet since these offerings were to idols it was as though the priests really fed on the people's sins. The priests desired these offerings, which meant they desired the people to practice idolatry so they would bring more sacrifices. King Jeroboam I had appointed as priests people from any tribe and all walks of life in Israel (1 Kings 12:31; 13:33).
4:9 God would, therefore, punish the unfaithful priests of Israel as He would punish the unfaithful people of Israel. Both groups were sinning, so God promised to punish them for their sinful ways and to repay them for their idolatrous works.
4:10 They would eat but not have enough because the Lord would send drought and scarcity of food as punishment (cf. v. 3). They would act like harlots by committing fornication with pagan temple prostitutes, but their numbers would not increase because Yahweh would reduce their fertility. He would do this because they had stopped listening to and obeying Him by observing His law.
The following section is a general indictment of the people of Israel for their idolatry.
4:11 The practice of idolatry (spiritual harlotry), with its emphasis on drinking wine, had turned the heart of the Israelites from Yahweh. With their heart for God went their realistic understanding of what was best for them, which He had revealed.
4:12 God's people consulted wooden idols and sought revelations using a diviner's rod. Their spirit of harlotry led them astray from the true God and His Word. They behaved like harlots departing from the authority of their spiritual husband, Yahweh.
4:13 They worshipped their idols on the tops of hills and under trees because they enjoyed worshipping at their convenience (cf. 2 Kings 17:10-11). This was as bad as the daughters of the Israelites practicing harlotry and adultery with male cult prostitutes (cf. Deut. 23:17-18; 1 Kings 14:24).
4:14 However, Yahweh would not punish only the females in Israel, because the males were just as guilty. The females were unfaithful to their husbands, but their husbands were also engaging in immoral acts with pagan temple prostitutes.
"For homosexuals, homosexual prostitutes were provided (1 Kgs 14:24; 15:12; 22:46; 2 Kgs 23:7)."41
Thus this people marked by lack of understanding would come to ruin when God humbled them with punishment.
4:15 The Lord warned the Israelites not to pollute their brethren in the Southern Kingdom with their unfaithfulness. He also warned them not to go to the pagan shrines and take an oath in His name since they did not really worship Him. This was pure hypocrisy. Gilgal and Beth-aven were representative pagan cultic sites (cf. 9:15; 12:11; Amos 4:4). The prophet had come to refer to Bethel (house of God) by the name Beth-aven (house of wickedness) because it had become one of the main centers of idolatry in Israel since the reign of Jeroboam I (cf. 10:5; Amos 5:5).42
4:16 The Lord asked rhetorically if He could continue to guide Israel as its Shepherd since it was not behaving like a compliant heifer or lamb but had become stubborn and obstinate. No, He could not.
4:17 Since Ephraim, the largest tribe in the Northern Kingdom that stood for the whole nation, had abandoned her Shepherd for idols, He called others to leave her alone also. He would abandon her to the judgment that would come inevitably from pursuing sin (cf. Rom. 1:18-32). Ephraim had become incorrigible.
4:18 Even when the Israelites were not under the influence of liquor (cf. v. 11), they still played the harlot continually. The rulers of the people, who were to be as shields protecting the general populace, also loved the sins that brought shame on the nation.
4:19 God would blow Israel away in judgment as though the wind wrapped the nation in its wings. When judgment came, the Israelites would finally feel shame for sacrificing to idols.
"God's covenant people are called to court, found to be in violation of the stipulations of his covenant, and sentenced to destruction.
"The passage details a long series of crimes against the divine law, all related to the catalog of blessings and curses found in Deut 28-33. The sins of omission and commission pictured so relentlessly throughout the chapter make up a remarkably complete picture of the depths of Israel's apostasy."43
