Charles Ellicott Commentary Hosea 4

Controversy. —A judicial suit, in which Jehovah is plaintiff as well as judge (Isaiah 1:23; Isaiah 41:21). By the “children of Israel” we are to understand the northern kingdom of the ten tribes, as distinguished from Judah.

Mercy. —Better rendered love. The Hebrew word chésed expresses

1. the love of God for Israel under covenant relationship;
2. the corresponding quality in humans exhibited to God or towards their fellow humans.

Blood toucheth blood — that is, murder is added to murder with ghastly prevalence. References to false swearing and lying are repeated in terrible terms by Amos 2:6-8 and Micah 7:2-8; and the form of the charge suggests the Decalogue and pre-existing legislation (Exodus 20:13–15).

The mourning of the land is the judgment of famine, which falls not only on living people, but on all living things (the Septuagint has introduced into the enumeration the creeping things of the earth). Even the fishes of the sea are swept away. There is plague on fish as well as disease on cattle, and starvation of the birds of heaven.

Yet let no man strive, nor reprove another. —Better, Nevertheless, let no one contend, let no one reprove, for the voices of wise counsel, the warnings of the prophet, will be silenced. Ephraim will in his obstinate wrongdoing be left alone. The last clause of the verse is rendered by nearly all versions and commentators, Though thy people are as those who contend with a priest — i.e., are as guilty as those who transgress the teaching of the Torah by defying the injunctions of the priest (Deuteronomy 17:12–13; Numbers 15:33).

But the Speaker’s Commentary gives a different rendering, which is better adapted to the denunciations of the priest in the following verses . By a slight change in the punctuation of the Hebrew we obtain the interpretation, “And thy people, O priest, are as my adversaries.” The position of the vocative in Hebrew, and the absence of the article, are, no doubt, objections to such a construction, but they are not insuperable, and the compensating advantage to exegesis is manifest.

The priest’s function is discharged in the day, and the prophet dreams in the night. Both will totter to their fall.

Your mother— i.e., your nation.