Israel's guilt and punishment.
Priests and people were guilty alike, and would be overtaken by one common doom.
I. THE SIN OF THE PRIESTS.
1. They rejected the knowledge of God (Hosea 4:6). They did not engage in the study of the Divine Law, and their lives were a violation of its precepts.
2. They consequently failed to teach the Law to the people (Hosea 4:6).
3. They connived at the national idolatry, on account of the material profit which they obtained from it (Hosea 4:8). The calf-worship brought them many sacrificial fees; so the priests, instead of rebuking the iniquity, "set their heart" upon its continuance.
II. THE SIN OF THE PEOPLE.
1. They willfully forgot the Law of God (Hosea 4:6).
2. The more prosperous they became externally, the more grievously they sinned (Hosea 4:7).
3. They addicted themselves to idolatrous divination, using sometimes teraphim, and sometimes divining rods (Hosea 4:12). In worshipping wooden gods, they showed themselves to be at once wooden-headed and wooden-hearted (Psalms 115:8).
4. They practiced the sensual rites of nature-worship with the temple prostitutes of Ashtaroth, and even were so shameless as sometimes to appear with them at the altar (verses. 13, 14). Impurity in one's religion is often joined with uncleanness of body.
III. THE DOOM THREATENED UPON BOTH. (Hosea 4:9)
1. The priests and their sons would be deprived of their office, and the people would lose their high prerogative of being a priestly nation (Hosea 4:6).
2. The glory of the kingdom would be turned into shame by reason of the loss of the numbers, wealth, and power in which they gloried (Hosea 4:7).
3. Their sin would also become its own punishment (Hosea 4:10, Hosea 4:11). The Lord would cause them to "eat of the fruit of their own way." The result would be surfeit, not satisfaction. Their sin would be their torment.
4. God would "give them up to vile affections;" he would cease to correct them for their idolatry and licentiousness, and thus visit them with reprobation (Hosea 4:14).
CONCLUSION. Hosea 4:11 contains the solemn statement of a great moral truth respecting all sin, and which is specially applicable to sins of sensuality. Who can place confidence in the moral judgments of an adulterer or a fornicator? How sad when such men occupy positions of influence in Church or state!
"Beware of lust; it doth pollute and foul
Whom God in baptism washed with his own blood:
It blots thy lesson written in thy soul;
The holy lines cannot be understood.
How dare those eyes upon a Bible look,
Much less towards God, whose lust is all their book!"
(George Herbert)
C.J.