Charles Ellicott Commentary Hosea 9:4

"They shall not pour out wine-offerings to Jehovah, neither shall they be pleasing unto him: their sacrifices shall be unto them as the bread of mourners; all that eat thereof shall be polluted; for their bread shall be for their appetite; it shall not come into the house of Jehovah." — Hosea 9:4 (ASV)

Offer—that is, pour out as a libation. A better rendering is obtained by abandoning the Hebrew accentuation: And their sacrifices will not be pleasing to Him; it will be to them as bread of sorrow—that is, funeral food, which defiles for seven days those who partake of it. Another reference to the Mosaic legislation (Deuteronomy 26:14)—Yes, their bread is for their appetite (that is, only for bodily sustenance), it does not come to Jehovah’s house as a sacred offering. These verses show that Hosea did not consider the worship of the Northern Kingdom as in itself illegal.

Kuenen (Hibbert Lecture, p. 312) proposes an alteration in the text, by which the parallelism becomes more harmonious and the construction simpler. He then renders, They will pour no libation of wine to Jehovah, and will not lay out their sacrifices before Him: as food eaten in mourning is their food. This agrees better with Hosea 3:4.