Hosea 4:2

By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood. BY SWEARING, AND LYING, AND KILLING, AND STEALING, AND COMMITTING ADULTERY, THEY BREAK OUT - bursting through every restraint. AND BLOOD TOUCHETH BLOOD - literally, bloods. One act of bloodshed follows another without any interval between. Thus, presently after Shallum murdered Zachariah after a six months' reign, Menahem smote Shallum after reigning a full month: then he attacked Tirzah, and ripped up the women with child (2 Kings 15:8; ; )....

But after having said that they were full of perfidiousness and cruelty, he adds, _By cursing, and lying, and killing, etc_. , אלה, _ale, _means to swear: some explain it in this place as signifying to forswear; and others read the two together, אלה וכחש, _ale ucachesh, _to swear and lie, that is to deceive by swearing. But as אלה “alah” means often to curse, the Prophet here, I doubt not, condemns the practice of cursing, which was become frequent and common among the people. But he enumerates particulars in order more effectually to check the fierceness of the people; for the wicked, we know, do not easily bend their neck: they first murmur, then they clamour against wholesome instruction, and at last they rage with open fury, and break out into violence, when they cannot otherwise stop the progress of sound doctrine. How ever this may be, we see that they

1-5 Hosea reproves for immorality, as well as idolatry. There was no truth, mercy, or knowledge of God in the land: it was full of murders, 2 Kings 21:16. Therefore calamities were near, which would desolate the country. Our sins, as separate persons, as a family, as a neighbourhood, as a nation, cause the Lord to have a controversy with us; let us submit and humble ourselves before Him, that he may not go on to destroy....

Verse Hosea 4:2. _BY SWEARING, AND LYING_] Where there is no _truth_ there will be _lies and perjury_; for false swearing is brought in to confirm lying statements. And when there is no _mercy, killing,_ _slaying_, and _murders_, will be frequent. And where there is _no_ _knowledge of God_, no conviction of his _omnipresence_ and _omniscience_, private offenses, such as stealing, adulteries, c., will prevail. These, sooner or later, _break out_, become a _flood_, and carry all before them. _Private stealing_ will assume the form of a _public robbery_, and _adulteries_ become _fashionable_, especially among the higher orders and suits of _crim. con_. render them more public, scandalous, and corrupting. By the examination of _witnesses_, and reading of _infamous letters_ in a court of justice, people are ta...

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 forcible 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 besides; as we say more familiarly, “It was all, swearing, lying, killing, stealing, committing adultery.” It is as if the prophet, seeing with a sight above 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 which he saw. This it was and nothing but this, which met his eyes, wherever he looked, whatever he heard, “swearing, lying, killing, stealing...

EXPOSITION HOSEA 4:1 A new and distinct division of the book commences with this fourth chapter and continues till the close. What had previously been presented in figure and symbol is now plainly and literally stated. The children of Israel are summoned in the first verse of this chapter to hear the charge preferred against them and the sentence pronounced. Having convened, as it were, a public assembly and cited the persons concerned, the prophet proceeds to show cause why they are bound to give an attentive hearing. In God's controversy with the people of the land the prophet acts as his ambassador, accusing the people of great and grievous sins, and vindicating the justice of God's judgments in their punishment. The _ki_ with which the last clause of the verse commences may be either causal or recitative, and may thus specify either the ground or sub

BY SWEARING, AND LYING,.... Which some join together, and make but one sin of it, false swearing, so Jarchi and Kimchi; but that swearing itself signifies, as the Targum interprets it; for it not only takes in all cursing and imprecations, profane oaths, and taking the name of God in vain, and swearing by the creatures, but may chiefly design perjury; which, though one kind of "lying", may be distinguished from it here; the latter intending "lying" in common, which the devil is the father of, mankind are incident unto, and which is abominable to God, whether in civil or in religious things: "and killing, and stealing and committing adultery"; murders, thefts, and adulteries, were very common with them; sins against the sixth, eighth, and seventh commandments: THEY BREAK OUT; through all the restraints of the laws of God and man, like an unruly horse that breaks his bridle and runs away;...

II. THE MESSAGE OF EXPOSTULATION, JUDGMENT, AND MERCY CHAPTER 4 The Lord's Controversy with His People _ 1. The condition of the people (Hosea 4:1) _ 2. The loss of their priestly relation (Hosea 4:6) 3. Israel's idolatry (Hosea 4:12) Hosea 4:1. This chapter begins with a terse description of the condition of the professing people of God. First, we have the negative side--no truth, no mercy, no knowledge of God. And there was no truth, because they had rejected the Word of the Lord, hence the result no mercy and no knowledge of God. It is so still whenever and wherever the Word of God is set aside. Then follows the pos

THE UTTER CORRUPTION OF THE NATION TRACED TO IRRELIGION. (The text of Hosea 4:15 is hopelessly corrupt. Marti regards Hosea 4:3 as an insertion and Hosea 4:5_ a_ as foreign to their present context.) The complete lack of knowledge of God in the land (_cf. Hosea 4:6_, Hosea 5:4; Hosea 6:3) has, as its inevitable consequence, widespread moral corruption yet let none reprove, for the people is as the priestling and the prophet as the priest ...

BY SWEARING, &C. These are the evils which flow from. want of the knowledge of God. Compare Hosea 4:6; Hosea 2:20. Rom 1:21. 1 John 2:3 1 John 2:4. 1 John 4:7; 1 John 4:8. BLOOD TOUCHETH BLOOD: or, murder follows murder; "blood" being put by Figure of speech _Synecdoche_ (of Species), App-6, for bloodshed....