Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 4:14

"I will not punish your daughters when they play the harlot, nor your brides when they commit adultery; for [the men] themselves go apart with harlots, and they sacrifice with the prostitutes; and the people that doth not understand shall be overthrown." — Hosea 4:14 (ASV)

I will not punish your daughters - God threatens, as the severest woe, that He will not punish their sins with the correction of a Father in this present life, but will leave the sinners, unheeded, to follow all iniquity. It is the last punishment of persevering sinners, that God leaves them to prosper in their sins and in those things which help them to sin. Hence, we are taught to pray, O Lord, correct me, but in judgment, not in Your anger. (Jeremiah 10:24)

For since God chastises those whom He loves, it follows, if we be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are we bastards, and not sons. (Hebrews 12:8) To be chastened severely for lesser sins is a sign of great love of God toward us; to sin on without punishment is a sign of God’s extreme displeasure, and a sign of reprobation: “Great is the offence, if, when you have sinned, you are undeserving of the wrath of God.”

For themselves are separated with whores - God turns from them as unworthy to be spoken to anymore, and speaks of them: They separate themselves—from whom? And with whom? They separate themselves from God, and with the degraded ones and with devils. Yet so do all those who choose willful sin.

And they sacrifice - (continually, as before) with (the) harlots. The unhappy women spoken of here were such as were consecrated (as their name imports) to their vile gods and goddesses, and to prostitution.

This dreadful consecration, indeed desecration, by which they were taught to seek honor in their disgrace, was spread in different forms over Phoenicia, Syria, Phrygia, Assyria, Babylonia. Ashtaroth (the Greek Astarte) was its chief object.

This horrible worship prevailed in Midian when Israel was entering the promised land, and it suggested the devilish device of Balaam (Numbers 25:0; Numbers 31:8; Numbers 31:16) to entangle Israel in sin by which they might forfeit the favor of God.

The like is said to exist to this day in pagan India. The sin was both the cause and effect of the superstition. Man’s corrupt heart gave rise to the worship, and the worship in turn fostered the corruption.

He first sanctioned the sin by means of a degrading worship of nature, and then committed it on the pretext of that worship. He made his sin a law to him.

Women, who never relapsed into the sin, sinned in obedience to the dreadful law. Blinded as they were, the individual pagan had the excuse of their hereditary blindness; the Jews had imperfect grace. The sins of Christians are self-sought, against light and grace.

Therefore the people that doth not understand shall fall - The word comprises both, that doth not understand, and, that will not understand. They might have understood, if they would.

God had revealed Himself to them, had given them His law, and was still sending them His prophets, so that they could have known and understood God’s will, if they had been willing.

Ignorance, which we might avoid or cure if we would, is itself a sin. It cannot excuse sin. They shall, he says, fall, or be cast headlong.

Those who blind their eyes, so as not to see or understand God’s will, bring themselves to sudden ruin, which they hide from themselves, until they fall headlong in it.