This thought is carried out still further in the second strophe, Hosea 4:6-10. Hosea 4:6. "My nation is destroyed for lack of knowledge; for thou, the knowledge hast thou rejected, and so do I reject thee from being a priest to me. Thou didst forget the law of thy God; thy sons will I also forget." The speaker is Jehovah: my nation, that is to say, the nation of Jehovah. This nation perishes for lack of the knowledge of God and His salvation. Hadda‛ath (the knowledge) with the definite article points back to da‛ath Elōhı̄m (knowledge of God) in Hosea 4:1. This knowledge Israel might have drawn from the law, in which God had revealed His counsel and will (Deuteronomy 30:15), but it would not. It rejected the knowledge and forgot the law of its God, and would be rejected and forgotten by God in consequence. In 'attâh (thou) it is not the priests who are addressed - the custodians of the law and promoters of divine knowledge in the nation - but the whole nation of the ten tribes which adhered to the image-worship set up by Jeroboam, with its illegal priesthood (1 Kings 12:26-33), in spite of all the divine threats and judgments, through which one dynasty after another was destroyed, and would not desist from this sin of Jeroboam. The Lord would therefore reject it from being priest, i.e., would deprive it of the privilege of being a priestly nation (Exodus 19:6), would strip it of the privilege of being a priestly nation (Exodus 19:6), would strip it of its priestly rank, and make it like the heathen. According to Olshausen (Heb. Gram. p. 179), the anomalous form אמאסאך is only a copyist's error for אמאסך; but Ewald (247, e) regards it as an Aramaean pausal form. "Thy sons," the children of the national community, regarded as a mother, are the individual members of the nation.

Hosea 14:6 Parallel Commentaries

branches.

Psalm 80:9-11 You prepared room before it, and did cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land...

Ezekiel 17:5-8 He took also of the seed of the land, and planted it in a fruitful field; he placed it by great waters, and set it as a willow tree...

Ezekiel 31:3-10 Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of an high stature...

Daniel 4:10-15 Thus were the visions of my head in my bed; I saw, and behold a tree in the middle of the earth, and the height thereof was great...

Matthew 13:31 Another parable put he forth to them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took...

John 15:1 I am the true vine, and my Father is the farmer.

Romans 11:16-24 For if the first fruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches...

spread. Heb. go. and his beauty.

Psalm 52:8 But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God: I trust in the mercy of God for ever and ever.

Psalm 128:3 Your wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of your house: your children like olive plants round about your table.

his smell.

Genesis 27:27 And he came near, and kissed him: and he smelled the smell of his raiment, and blessed him, and said, See...

Songs 4:11-15 Your lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under your tongue...

2 Corinthians 2:14,15 Now thanks be to God, which always causes us to triumph in Christ, and makes manifest the aroma of his knowledge by us in every place...

Philippians 4:18 But I have all, and abound: I am full, having received of Epaphroditus the things which were sent from you, an odor of a sweet smell...