Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 4:2

"There is nought but swearing and breaking faith, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery; they break out, and blood toucheth blood." — Hosea 4:2 (ASV)

By swearing, and lying ... - Literally, "swearing or cursing," "and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery!" The words in Hebrew are nouns of action. The Hebrew form is very vivid and solemn.

It is far more forceful than if he had said, "They swear, lie, kill, and steal." It expresses that these sins were continual, that nothing else (so to speak) was going on; that it was all one scene of such sins, one course of them, and of nothing else. As we say more familiarly, "It was all, swearing, lying, killing, stealing, committing adultery."

It is as if the prophet, seeing with a sight beyond nature, a vision from God, saw, as in a picture, what was going on all around, within and without, and summed up in this brief picture all that he saw. This it was, and nothing but this, that met his eyes wherever he looked, whatever he heard: "swearing, lying, killing, stealing, committing adultery." The prophet had previously said that the ten tribes were utterly lacking in all truth, all love, and all knowledge of God.

But where there are none of these, there, in all activity, will be the contrary vices. When the land or the soul is empty of the good, it will be full of the evil. They break out—that is, burst through all bounds set to restrain them, as a river bursts its banks and overspreads all things or sweeps everything before it. And blood toucheth blood—literally, "bloods touch bloods." The blood was poured so continuously and in such torrents that it flowed on until stream met stream and formed one wide inundation of blood.