Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 5:4

"Their doings will not suffer them to turn unto their God; for the spirit of whoredom is within them, and they know not Jehovah." — Hosea 5:4 (ASV)

They will not frame their doings ... — They were possessed by an evil spirit, impelling and driving them to sin. The spirit of whoredoms is in the midst of them—that is, in their very inward self, their center, so to speak; in their souls, where the will, the reason, and the judgment reside. And so long as they did not, by the strength of God, dislodge him, they would and could not frame their acts so as to repent and turn to God. For a mightier impulse mastered them and drove them into sin, as the evil spirit drove the swine into the deep.

The rendering of the margin, although less agreeable to the Hebrew, also gives a striking sense: Their doings will not suffer them to turn unto their God. This is not so much that their habits of sin had gained an absolute mastery over them, so as to render repentance impossible, but rather, that it was impossible for them to turn inwardly while they did not turn outwardly. Their evil doings, so long as they persevered in doing them, took away all heart by which to turn to God with a solid conversion.

And yet He was their God; this made their sin the more grievous. He, whom they would not turn to, still owned them and was still ready to receive them as their God. For the prophet continues, and they have not known the Lord.

Him, their God, they did not know. For the spirit which possessed them hindered them from thought, from memory, from conception of spiritual things. They did not turn to God for these reasons:

1. because the evil spirit held them, and so long as they allowed his hold, they were filled with carnal thoughts which kept them back from God.
2. they did not know God; so that, not knowing how good and how great a good He is in Himself, and how good He is to us, they had not even the desire to turn to Him, for love of Himself, indeed even for love of themselves. They did not see that they lost a loving God.