Hosea 4:11
Promiscuity, wine, and new wine take away understanding.
Sermons
Sensuality is RuinJ.R. Thomson Hosea 4:11
Priests and PeopleJ. Orr Hosea 4:6-11
Israel's Guilt and PunishmentC. Jerdan Hosea 4:6-14














Whilst the language of this prophet regarding debauchery is sometimes to be taken figuratively, we have no option but to read this statement in its obvious and literal sense. Evidently the worship of foreign deities in northern Palestine was accompanied by licentious rites and debasing moral habits. In this verse is set forth the general law that the indulgence of the animal nature involves mental and moral deterioration and destruction.

I. SENSUALITY AFFECTS THE MIND THROUGH THE BODY. Whoredom and intoxication have ever been, and are to-day, the two great "sins of the flesh." Man's bodily nature is so constituted that these practices derange the nervous system, and render the sinner mentally incapable of many of the serious duties of life. The lunatic asylums are peopled with those who have lost their mental powers through addictedness to wine and to women. And where the evil has not gone to lengths so great, it is nevertheless sufficient to affect the powers of application, the memory, and the judgment.

II. SENSUALITY INJURES THE MIND BY CONSTANTLY DIRECTING IT TO MEANS OF CARNAL GRATIFICATION. The man who is besotted with the hove of pleasure, and is constantly planning new means of animal gratification and excitement, has little energy to spare for loftier flights. Even his intellectual efforts are tainted with the poison. if he be a man of genius, the trail of the serpent is over his works.

III. SENSUALITY CURSES THE MIND WITH SELFISHNESS. Whatever makes a man selfish takes away his heart. The sensual become machines bent upon the vain task of satisfying the bodily appetites. Those addicted to vice have no room in their souls for generous impulses, and have no disposition to engage in works of philanthropy and public good.

IV. SENSUALITY INDISPOSES THE MIND TO RECEIVE THE ENLIGHTENING AND QUICKENING INFLUENCES OF RELIGION. Christianity is a rebuke to the lover of pleasure; for it summons man to a spiritual life, imposes spiritual service, and proffers spiritual joys. He that liveth in pleasure is dead while he liveth. Christ calls us to mortify the deeds of the body. His religion is, indeed, not ascetic; at the marriage-feast at Cana he sanctioned wedded love and the proper use of wine. But he cannot tolerate a sensual life, and has declared plainly that the debauched and the drunken can have no place in his kingdom. For such have permitted Satan to take away their heart, and they have none left to give to Christ.

APPLICATION. Let the young be warned against the insidious and seductive snares which the world lays for their downfall, and into which their weak and sinful nature is too apt to lead them; there is safety only by the cross, and by the Spirit of the Holy Savior. - T.

Hear the Word of the Lord, ye children of Israel: for the Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land.
Homilist.
In the previous chapters the prophet's language had been highly and somewhat perplexingly symbolical. In this chapter he begins to speak more plainly and in sententious utterances.

I. A CORRUPT PEOPLE. The depravity of Israel is represented —

1. Negatively. "There is no truth," etc. These are the great fontal virtues in the universe; and where they are not, there is a moral abjectness of the most terrible description. A people without reality, their very life a lie. No acts of beneficence performed, and the very spirit of kindliness extinct. The greatest, the holiest Being in the universe utterly ignored.

2. Positively. The absence of these great virtues gives rise to tremendous crimes.

(1)Profanity. Reverence is gone.

(2)Falsehood.

(3)Killing.

(4)Dishonesty.

(5)Incontinence.

(6)Murder.

II. AN EXPOSTULATING GOD. "The Lord hath controversy." Of all controversies this is the most awful.

1. It is a just controversy. Has not the great Ruler of the universe a right to contend against such evils?

2. It is a continuous controversy.

3. It is an unequal controversy. What are all human intellects to His? Sparks to the sun. The sinner has no argument to put before Him. He cannot deny his sins. He cannot plead accidents. He cannot plead compulsion. He cannot plead some merit as a set-off, for he has none. This controversy is still going on. It is held in the court of conscience, and you must know of its existence and character.

(Homilist.)

In this chapter Israel is cited to appear at God's tribunal. There the Lord makes the following accusations —

1. Gross violation of both Tables of the Law, both by omission and by commission. God threatens, because of this, to send extreme desolation.

2. Desperate incorrigibleness. He threatens to destroy such, and the false prophets, and the body of the people and Church.

3. God accuseth the priests in Israel, that, through their fault, the people were kept in ignorance. He threatens to cast them and their posterity off. He further accuses the priests of ingratitude towards Elm, for which He threatens to turn their glory into ignominy. And tie even accuses them of sensuality and covetousness, rendering them unfaithful to their calling.

4. He accuses the whole people of gross idolatry, and threatens not to restrain their sin by corrections.

5. He accuses them of the idolatry of the calves, from which He dissuades Judah, as being an evidence of Israel's wantonness, and the cause of their ensuing exile.

6. He accuses Ephraim, the kingly tribe, of their incorrigibleness in idolatry, their intemperance, filthiness, and corruption of justice through covetousness. For this He threatens sudden and violent destruction and captivity, where they should be ashamed of their corrupt worship.

(George Hutcheson.)

I. THE SUIT COMMENCED.

1. The knowledge that any truth is the Word of the Lord is a special means to prepare the heart to receive it with reverence and all due respect, even though it be hard and grievous to flesh and blood.

2. The nearness of a people to God does not exempt them from God's contending with them for sin.

3. The nearer the relationship the more grievous the controversy.

II. THE PLEADING OF GOD. A suit first is entered against a man; when the court day comes, there is calling for a declaration.

1. God contends not with a people without a cause.

2. God contends not against a people for little things. These are not little things "No truth, no mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land."

3. It is in vain for any man to talk of his religion, if he make no conscience of the second table as well as the first.

III. JUDGMENT PRONOUNCED (ver. 3, etc.). "Therefore shall the land mourn."

1. All the glory and pomp of the men of the world is but as

a flower.

2. Times of affliction take down the jollity and bravery of men's spirits, and make them fade, wither, and pine away.

3. The good or evil of the creature depends on man.

4. God, when in a way of wrath, can cause His wrath to reach to those things that seem to be most remote.

5. No creature can help man in the time of God's wrath, for every creature suffers as well as man.

IV. EXHORTATION TO JUDAH TO BEWARE THAT SHE COME NOT INTO THE SAME CONDITION (ver. 15). The prophet Hosea was sent especially to Israel, to the Ten Tribes, but here we see he turns his speech to Judah.

1. Ministers should especially look to those whom they are bound unto by office, but yet so as to labour to benefit others when occasion offers.

2. When we see our labour lost on those we most desire to benefit, we should try what we can do with others. There were many arguments why Judah should not do as Israel did.

V. EXECUTION, GOD IN HIS WRATH GIVING UP EPHRAIM TO HIMSELF (ver. 17).

1. Ephraim engaging himself in false worship is now so inwrapped in that sin and guilt that he cannot tell how to extricate himself.

2. The Lord has given him up to his idols.(1) It is a heavy judgment upon a people when the saints withdraw from them.(2) The Lord here virtually says to Hosea, "You can do no good to them, it is in vain for you to meddle with Ephraim." God has a time to give men over to themselves, to say that His Spirit shall no longer strive with them. It is the most woeful judgment of God upon any people, or person, when He saith in His wrath, "Let him alone." It is a testimony of very great disregard in God for His creatures. Those thus let alone are going apace to misery. God intends by this to make way for some fearful wrath that is to come upon them. It is a dreadful sign of reprobation.

(Jeremiah Burroughs.)

The court is set, and both attendance and attention are demanded. Whom may God expect to give Him a fair hearing, and take from Him a fair warning, but the children of Israel, His own professing people? Sin is the great mischief-maker; it sows discord between God and Israel. God sees sin in His own people, and a good action He has against them for it. He has a controversy with them for breaking covenant with Him, for bringing a reproach upon Him, and for an ungrateful return to Him for His favours. God's controversies will be pleaded, pleaded by the judgments of His mouth before they are pleaded by the judgments of His hand, that He may be justified in all He does, and may make it appear that He desires not the death of sinners; and God's pleadings ought to be attended to, for, sooner or later, they shall have a hearing.

( Matthew Henry.)

There is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land
Truth and mercy are often spoken of as to Almighty God. Truth takes in all which is right, and to which God has bound Himself; mercy all beyond which God does out of His boundless love. When God says of Israel there is no truth nor mercy, He says that there is absolutely none of those two great qualities under which He comprises all His own goodness. "There is no truth," none whatever, "no regard for known truth; no conscience, no sincerity, no uprightness; no truth of words; no truth of promises; no truth in witnessing; no making good in deeds what they said in words." "Nor mercy." This word has a wide meaning; it includes all love to one another, a love issuing in acts. It includes lovingkindness, piety to parents, natural affection, forgiveness, tenderness, beneficence, mercy, goodness. The prophet, in declaring the absence of this grace, declares the absence of all included under it. Whatever could be comprised under love, whatever feelings are influenced by love, of that there was nothing. "Nor knowledge of God." The union of right knowledge and wrong practice is hideous in itself; and it must be especially offensive to Almighty God that His creatures should know whom they offend, how they offend Him, and yet, amid and against their knowledge, choose that which displeases Him. And on that ground, perhaps, He has so created us, that when our acts are wrong, our knowledge becomes darkened. The knowledge of God is not merely to know some things of God, as that He is the Creator and Preserver of the world and of ourselves. To know things of God is not to know God Himself. We cannot know God in any respect unless we are so far made like unto Him. Knowledge of God being tim gift of the Holy Ghost, he who hath not grace, cannot have that knowledge. A certain degree of speculative knowledge of God a bad man may have. But even this knowledge is not retained without love. Those who "held the truth in unrighteousness" ended (St. Paul says) by corrupting it. Certainly, the speculative and practical, knowledge are bound up together through the oneness of the relation of the soul to God, whether in its thoughts of Him, or its acts towards Him. Wrong practice corrupts belief, as misbelief corrupts practice. The prophet then probably denies that there was any true knowledge of God, of any sort, whether of life or faith, or understanding or love. Ignorance of God, then, is a great evil, a source of all other sins.

(E. B. Pusey, D. D.)

No one can fail to acknowledge in this terrible picture a representation of every people which habitually breaks the laws of God; and who, having set themselves free from the restraints of religion, or, through ignorance, being unconscious of their obligation, are delivered up to the working of their own heart's lusts, and to follow their own imaginations. This consummation of depravity is even found in the chosen people of God. There was no truth where the great Source of all truth had announced the laws of moral perfection: there was no mercy where the prodigies of Divine compassion had been manifested from one generation to another: there was no knowledge of God where alone God could be known, and in the only place in which the principles of His government, and the attributes of His person, had been revealed to man. What rendered the case of Israel desperate, and remedy impossible, was this, that those who had been set apart as the depositaries of Divine knowledge, and who, by their life and doctrine, had been intended by the Almighty to act constantly, as a conservative power, against the corruptions of the mass, had yielded themselves to the popular torrent, and turned rank and station, the dignity of a holy vocation, and the talents of knowledge and intellect to the promotion of those vices which God had given them a solemn commission to withstand. They were weary of resisting the tendencies of the age and the godless spirit which found too complete an echo in their own hearts. So the princes and priests of Israel deserted their post, sealed up the records of God's Word, and by ceasing to inculcate the awful sanctions of His law, and concealing from the people those oracles in which alone knowledge and wisdom are to be found, filled up to the brim the measure of their iniquity. That measure was filled up because they who had knowledge and had the guardianship of God's heritage had turned traitors and withheld the Bread of Life from the famishing people. To whatever privileges a people may have been elected, no outward marks of distinction, apart from a corresponding holiness, will avail in the sight of Him who is no respecter of persons, and who trieth the very reins and hearts. The history of Israel is nothing but the annals of those judgments with which tie has visited their abuse of mercies, and their never-ending neglect or perversion of that most awful of all deposits, spiritual knowledge. If men in all times have been made accountable to God for the fate of their fellowcreatures, and most assuredly they have, it behoves us to look well to our own case, and beware how we involve ourselves in the participation of such guilt. Let us not deceive ourselves by supposing that the sins and the sanctions, the moral actions and the moral dealings of the eider covenant are inapplicable to ourselves. Considerable differences there may be, but they are all against us, and an increase of our responsibility. It is known to few of us how vast are the masses of ignorance and vice which undermine the surface of this favoured land.

(J. Garbett.)

People
Hosea
Places
Beth-aven, Gilgal, Jezreel
Topics
Fornication, Harlotry, Heart, Lewdness, Loose, Prostitution, Understanding, Whoredom, Wine, Wisdom
Outline
1. God denounces judgments on Israel, for their aggravated impieties and iniquities.
12. He exposes the ignorance and wickedness of the priests,
13. and moral dissolution of the people,
14. he will leave their wives and daughters to commit lewdness, without present punishment.
15. He warns Judah, not to imitate Israel's crimes, which are still further reproved.

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Hosea 4:11

     8355   understanding

Hosea 4:6-13

     7233   Israel, northern kingdom

Hosea 4:10-11

     5850   excess

Hosea 4:10-12

     4514   stick
     6243   adultery, spiritual
     8840   unfaithfulness, to God

Hosea 4:10-13

     8764   forgetting God

Hosea 4:10-14

     6239   prostitution

Hosea 4:10-15

     6189   immorality, examples

Hosea 4:10-19

     8705   apostasy, in OT

Library
'Let Him Alone'
'Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone.'--HOSEA iv. 17. The tribe of Ephraim was the most important member of the kingdom of Israel; consequently its name was not unnaturally sometimes used in a wider application for the whole of the kingdom, of which it was the principal part. Being the 'predominant partner,' its name was used alone for that of the whole firm, just as in our own empire, we often say 'England,' meaning thereby the three kingdoms: England, Scotland, and Ireland. So 'Ephraim' here
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

The Life, as Amplified by Mediaeval Biographers.
1. His Early Years.--Ephraim, according to this biography, was a Syrian of Mesopotamia, by birth, and by parentage on both sides. His mother was of Amid (now Diarbekr) a central city of that region; his father belonged to the older and more famous City of Nisibis, not far from Amid but near the Persian frontier, where he was priest of an idol named Abnil (or Abizal) in the days of Constantine the Great (306-337). This idol was afterwards destroyed by Jovian (who became Emperor in 363 after the
Ephraim the Syrian—Hymns and Homilies of Ephraim the Syrian

Instruction for the Ignorant:
BEING A SALVE TO CURE THAT GREAT WANT OF KNOWLEDGE, WHICH SO MUCH REIGNS BOTH IN YOUNG AND OLD. PREPARED AND PRESENTED TO THEM IN A PLAIN AND EASY DIALOGUE, FITTED TO THE CAPACITY OF THE WEAKEST. 'My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.'--Hosea 4:6 ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR. This little catechism is upon a plan perfectly new and unique. It was first published as a pocket volume in 1675, and has been republished in every collection of the author's works; and recently in a separate tract.
John Bunyan—The Works of John Bunyan Volumes 1-3

Beth-El. Beth-Aven.
Josephus thus describes the land of Benjamin; "The Benjamites' portion of land was from the river Jordan to the sea, in length: in breadth, it was bounded by Jerusalem and Beth-el." Let these last words be marked, "The breadth of the land of Benjamin was bounded by Jerusalem and Beth-el." May we not justly conclude, from these words, that Jerusalem and Beth-el were opposite, as it were, in a right line? But if you look upon the maps, there are some that separate these by a very large tract of land,
John Lightfoot—From the Talmud and Hebraica

Of Orders.
Of this sacrament the Church of Christ knows nothing; it was invented by the church of the Pope. It not only has no promise of grace, anywhere declared, but not a word is said about it in the whole of the New Testament. Now it is ridiculous to set up as a sacrament of God that which can nowhere be proved to have been instituted by God. Not that I consider that a rite practised for so many ages is to be condemned; but I would not have human inventions established in sacred things, nor should it be
Martin Luther—First Principles of the Reformation

"For the Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus Hath Made Me Free from the Law of Sin and Death. "
Rom. viii. 2.--"For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." You know there are two principal things in the preceding verse,--the privilege of a Christian, and the property or character of a Christian. He is one that never enters into condemnation; He that believeth shall not perish, John iii. 15. And then he is one that walks not after the flesh, though he be in the flesh, but in a more elevate way above men, after the guiding and leading
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

Epistle cxxi. To Leander, Bishop of Hispalis (Seville).
To Leander, Bishop of Hispalis (Seville). Gregory to Leander, Bishop of Spain. I have the epistle of thy Holiness, written with the pen of charity alone. For what the tongue transferred to the paper had got its tincture from the heart. Good and wise men were present when it was read, and at once their bowels were stirred with emotion. Everyone began to seize thee in his heart with the hand of love, for that in that epistle the sweetness of thy disposition was not to be heard, but seen. All severally
Saint Gregory the Great—the Epistles of Saint Gregory the Great

That the Ruler Relax not his Care for the Things that are Within in his Occupation among the Things that are Without, nor Neglect to Provide
The ruler should not relax his care for the things that are within in his occupation among the things that are without, nor neglect to provide for the things that are without in his solicitude for the things that are within; lest either, given up to the things that are without, he fall away from his inmost concerns, or, occupied only with the things that are within bestow not on his neighbours outside himself what he owes them. For it is often the case that some, as if forgetting that they have
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great

The Prophet Amos.
GENERAL PRELIMINARY REMARKS. It will not be necessary to extend our preliminary remarks on the prophet Amos, since on the main point--viz., the circumstances under which he appeared as a prophet--the introduction to the prophecies of Hosea may be regarded as having been written for those of Amos also. For, according to the inscription, they belong to the same period at which Hosea's prophetic ministry began, viz., the latter part of the reign of Jeroboam II., and after Uzziah had ascended the
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament

Seasonable Counsel: Or, Advice to Sufferers.
BY JOHN BUNYAN. London: Printed for Benjamin Alsop, at the Angel and Bible in the Poultry, 1684. ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR. THIS valuable treatise was first published in a pocket volume in 1684, and has only been reprinted in Whitfield's edition of Bunyan's works, 2 vols. folio, 1767. No man could have been better qualified to give advice to sufferers for righteousness' sake, than John Bunyan: and this work is exclusively devoted to that object. Shut up in a noisome jail, under the iron hand of
John Bunyan—The Works of John Bunyan Volumes 1-3

Joy
'The fruit of the Spirit is joy.' Gal 5:52. The third fruit of justification, adoption, and sanctification, is joy in the Holy Ghost. Joy is setting the soul upon the top of a pinnacle - it is the cream of the sincere milk of the word. Spiritual joy is a sweet and delightful passion, arising from the apprehension and feeling of some good, whereby the soul is supported under present troubles, and fenced against future fear. I. It is a delightful passion. It is contrary to sorrow, which is a perturbation
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity

The Third Commandment
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain: For the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.' Exod 20: 7. This commandment has two parts: 1. A negative expressed, that we must not take God's name in vain; that is, cast any reflections and dishonour on his name. 2. An affirmative implied. That we should take care to reverence and honour his name. Of this latter I shall speak more fully, under the first petition in the Lord's Prayer, Hallowed be thy name.' I shall
Thomas Watson—The Ten Commandments

The Doctrine
OF THE LAW AND GRACE UNFOLDED; OR, A DISCOURSE TOUCHING THE LAW AND GRACE; THE NATURE OF THE ONE, AND THE NATURE OF THE OTHER; SHOWING WHAT THEY ARE, AS THEY ARE THE TWO COVENANTS; AND LIKEWISE, WHO THEY BE, AND WHAT THEIR CONDITIONS ARE, THAT BE UNDER EITHER OF THESE TWO COVENANTS: Wherein, for the better understanding of the reader, there are several questions answered touching the law and grace, very easy to be read, and as easy to be understood, by those that are the sons of wisdom, the children
John Bunyan—The Works of John Bunyan Volumes 1-3

The Prophet Hosea.
GENERAL PRELIMINARY REMARKS. That the kingdom of Israel was the object of the prophet's ministry is so evident, that upon this point all are, and cannot but be, agreed. But there is a difference of opinion as to whether the prophet was a fellow-countryman of those to whom he preached, or was called by God out of the kingdom of Judah. The latter has been asserted with great confidence by Maurer, among others, in his Observ. in Hos., in the Commentat. Theol. ii. i. p. 293. But the arguments
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament

Hosea
The book of Hosea divides naturally into two parts: i.-iii. and iv.-xiv., the former relatively clear and connected, the latter unusually disjointed and obscure. The difference is so unmistakable that i.-iii. have usually been assigned to the period before the death of Jeroboam II, and iv.-xiv. to the anarchic period which succeeded. Certainly Hosea's prophetic career began before the end of Jeroboam's reign, as he predicts the fall of the reigning dynasty, i. 4, which practically ended with Jeroboam's
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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