It makes no great difference whether we regard this verse as concluding the foregoing or commencing a new paragraph, though we prefer the latter mode of connecting it. It states the debasing influence which debauchery and drunkenness are known to exercise over both head and heart: they dull the faculties of the former and deaden the affections of the latter.
The heart is not only the seat of the affections, as with us; it comprises also the, intellect and hill; while the word יִקַּת is not so much to take away as to captivate the heart, Rashi gives the former sense: "The whoredom and drunkenness to which they are devoted take away their heart from me."
Kimchi's explanation is judicious: "The whoredom to which they surrender themselves and the constant drunkenness which they practice take their heart, so that they have no understanding to perceive what is the way of goodness along which they should go."
He further distinguishes the tirosh from the yayin, remarking that the former is the new wine which takes the heart and suddenly intoxicates. The prophet, having had occasion to mention the sin of whoredom in Hosea 4:10, makes a general statement about the consequences of that sin combined with drunkenness in Hosea 4:10, as not only debasing, but depriving men of the right use of their reason and the proper exercise of their natural affections.
The following verses afford abundant evidence of all this in the insensate conduct of Israel at the time referred to.