Hosea 4:14
New International Version
“I will not punish your daughters when they turn to prostitution, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery, because the men themselves consort with harlots and sacrifice with shrine prostitutes— a people without understanding will come to ruin!

New Living Translation
But why should I punish them for their prostitution and adultery? For your men are doing the same thing, sinning with whores and shrine prostitutes. O foolish people! You refuse to understand, so you will be destroyed.

English Standard Version
I will not punish your daughters when they play the whore, nor your brides when they commit adultery; for the men themselves go aside with prostitutes and sacrifice with cult prostitutes, and a people without understanding shall come to ruin.

Berean Standard Bible
I will not punish your daughters when they prostitute themselves, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery. For the men themselves go off with prostitutes and offer sacrifices with shrine prostitutes. So a people without understanding will come to ruin.

King James Bible
I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your spouses when they commit adultery: for themselves are separated with whores, and they sacrifice with harlots: therefore the people that doth not understand shall fall.

New King James Version
“I will not punish your daughters when they commit harlotry, Nor your brides when they commit adultery; For the men themselves go apart with harlots, And offer sacrifices with a ritual harlot. Therefore people who do not understand will be trampled.

New American Standard Bible
I will not punish your daughters when they play the prostitute, Or your brides when they commit adultery, Because the men themselves slip away with the prostitutes And offer sacrifices with temple prostitutes; So the people without understanding are ruined.

NASB 1995
I will not punish your daughters when they play the harlot Or your brides when they commit adultery, For the men themselves go apart with harlots And offer sacrifices with temple prostitutes; So the people without understanding are ruined.

NASB 1977
I will not punish your daughters when they play the harlot Or your brides when they commit adultery, For the men themselves go apart with harlots And offer sacrifices with temple prostitutes; So the people without understanding are ruined.

Legacy Standard Bible
I will not punish your daughters when they play the harlot Or your brides when they commit adultery, For the men themselves go apart with harlots And offer sacrifices with cult prostitutes; So the people without understanding are ruined.

Amplified Bible
I will not punish your daughters when they play the prostitute Or your brides when they commit adultery, For the men themselves slip away with prostitutes, And they offer sacrifices with temple prostitutes [who give their bodies in honor of the idol]. So the people without understanding [stumble and fall and] come to ruin.

Christian Standard Bible
I will not punish your daughters when they act promiscuously or your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery, for the men themselves go off with prostitutes and make sacrifices with cult prostitutes. People without discernment are doomed.

Holman Christian Standard Bible
I will not punish your daughters when they act promiscuously or your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery, for the men themselves go off with prostitutes and make sacrifices with cult prostitutes. People without discernment are doomed.

American Standard Version
I will not punish your daughters when they play the harlot, nor your brides when they commit adultery; for the men themselves go apart with harlots, and they sacrifice with the prostitutes; and the people that doth not understand shall be overthrown.

Aramaic Bible in Plain English
I shall not visit your daughters when they will be whores, neither your brides when they shall commit adultery, because these are mingled with fornicators, and they sacrifice with those going out to the streets; the people without understanding embraces a whore

Brenton Septuagint Translation
And I will not visit upon your daughters when they shall commit fornication, nor your daughters-in-law when they shall commit adultery: for they themselves mingled themselves with harlots, and sacrificed with polluted ones, and the people that understood not entangled itself with a harlot.

Contemporary English Version
But I won't punish them. You men are to blame, because you go to prostitutes and offer sacrifices with them at pagan shrines. Your own foolishness will lead to your ruin.

Douay-Rheims Bible
I will not visit upon your daughters when they shell commit fornication, and upon your spouses when they shall commit adultery: because themselves conversed with harlots, and offered sacrifice with the effeminate, and the people that doth not understand shall be beaten.

English Revised Version
I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your brides when they commit adultery; for they themselves go apart with whores, and they sacrifice with the harlots: and the people that doth not understand shall be overthrown.

GOD'S WORD® Translation
Yet, I will not punish your daughters when they become prostitutes or your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery. The men go to prostitutes and offer sacrifices with temple prostitutes. These foolish people will be trampled.

Good News Translation
Yet I will not punish them for this, because you yourselves go off with temple prostitutes, and together with them you offer pagan sacrifices. As the proverb says, 'A people without sense will be ruined.'

International Standard Version
However, I'm not going to punish your daughters when they commit prostitution, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery, because their men are themselves immoral— they offer sacrifices with prostitutes. These people who aren't discerning will stumble.

JPS Tanakh 1917
I will not punish your daughters when they commit harlotry, Nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery; For they themselves consort with lewd women, And they sacrifice with harlots; And the people that is without understanding is distraught.

Literal Standard Version
Therefore your daughters commit whoredom, | And your spouses commit adultery, | I do not see after your daughters when they commit whoredom, | And after your spouses when they commit adultery, | For they with the harlots are separated, | And with the whores they sacrifice, | A people that does not understand kicks.

Majority Standard Bible
I will not punish your daughters when they prostitute themselves, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery. For the men themselves go off with prostitutes and offer sacrifices with shrine prostitutes. So a people without understanding will come to ruin.

New American Bible
I will not punish your daughters for their prostitution, nor your daughters-in-law for their adultery, Because the men themselves consort with prostitutes, and with temple women they offer sacrifice! Thus a people without understanding comes to ruin.

NET Bible
I will not punish your daughters when they commit prostitution, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery. For the men consort with harlots, they sacrifice with temple prostitutes. It is true: "A people that lacks understanding will come to ruin!"

New Revised Standard Version
I will not punish your daughters when they play the whore, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery; for the men themselves go aside with whores, and sacrifice with temple prostitutes; thus a people without understanding comes to ruin.

New Heart English Bible
I will not punish your daughters when they play the prostitute, nor your brides when they commit adultery; because the men consort with prostitutes, and they sacrifice with the shrine prostitutes; so the people without understanding will come to ruin.

Webster's Bible Translation
I will not punish your daughters when they are guilty of lewdness, nor your spouses when they commit adultery: for they themselves are separated with prostitutes, and they sacrifice with harlots: therefore the people that doth not understand shall fall.

World English Bible
I will not punish your daughters when they play the prostitute, nor your brides when they commit adultery; because the men consort with prostitutes, and they sacrifice with the shrine prostitutes; so the people without understanding will come to ruin.

Young's Literal Translation
Therefore commit whoredom do your daughters, And your spouses commit adultery, I do not see after your daughters when they commit whoredom, And after your spouses when they commit adultery, For they with the harlots are separated, And with the whores they do sacrifice, A people that doth not understand kicketh.

Additional Translations ...
Audio Bible



Context
God's Charges Against Israel
13They sacrifice on the mountaintops and burn offerings on the hills, under oak, poplar, and terebinth, because their shade is pleasant. And so your daughters turn to prostitution and your daughters-in-law to adultery. 14I will not punish your daughters when they prostitute themselves, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery. For the men themselves go off with prostitutes and offer sacrifices with shrine prostitutes. So a people without understanding will come to ruin. 15Though you prostitute yourself, O Israel, may Judah avoid such guilt! Do not journey to Gilgal, do not go up to Beth-aven, and do not swear on oath, ‘As surely as the LORD lives!’…

Cross References
Deuteronomy 23:17
No daughter or son of Israel is to be a shrine prostitute.

Hosea 4:6
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you as My priests. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your children.

Hosea 5:4
Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God, for a spirit of prostitution is within them, and they do not know the LORD.

Amos 2:7
They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the earth; they push the needy out of their way. A man and his father have relations with the same girl and so profane My holy name.

Amos 7:17
Therefore this is what the LORD says: 'Your wife will become a prostitute in the city, and your sons and daughters will fall by the sword. Your land will be divided by a measuring line, and you yourself will die on pagan soil. And Israel will surely go into exile, away from their homeland.'"


Treasury of Scripture

I will not punish your daughters when they commit prostitution, nor your spouses when they commit adultery: for themselves are separated with whores, and they sacrifice with harlots: therefore the people that does not understand shall fall.

I will not.

Hosea 4:17
Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone.

Isaiah 1:5
Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.

Hebrews 12:8
But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.

for.

1 Corinthians 6:16
What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh.

and they.

1 Kings 14:23,24
For they also built them high places, and images, and groves, on every high hill, and under every green tree…

1 Kings 15:12
And he took away the sodomites out of the land, and removed all the idols that his fathers had made.

2 Kings 23:7
And he brake down the houses of the sodomites, that were by the house of the LORD, where the women wove hangings for the grove.

therefore.

Hosea 4:1,5,6
Hear the word of the LORD, ye children of Israel: for the LORD hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land…

Hosea 14:9
Who is wise, and he shall understand these things? prudent, and he shall know them? for the ways of the LORD are right, and the just shall walk in them: but the transgressors shall fall therein.

Proverbs 28:5
Evil men understand not judgment: but they that seek the LORD understand all things.

fall.

Jump to Previous
Adultery Apart Brides Commit Consort Cult Daughters Daughters-In-Law Distraught Fall Guilty Harlotry Harlots Lewdness Offer Play Prostitute Prostitutes Prostitution Punish Ruin Ruined Sacrifice Separated Shrine Spouses Themselves Turn Understand Understanding Whoredom Whores Women
Jump to Next
Adultery Apart Brides Commit Consort Cult Daughters Daughters-In-Law Distraught Fall Guilty Harlotry Harlots Lewdness Offer Play Prostitute Prostitutes Prostitution Punish Ruin Ruined Sacrifice Separated Shrine Spouses Themselves Turn Understand Understanding Whoredom Whores Women
Hosea 4
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.














(14) Jehovah threatens to visit no punishment on the women for their licentiousness, because they are more sinned against than sinning.

Sacrifice with harlots.--Referring to the sensuality of the religious rites, as represented by the women (q'd?shoth) who dedicated themselves to these impurities.

Verse 14. - I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your spouses when they commit adultery. The spiritual adultery of parents and husbands would be punished by the carnal adultery of daughters and wives; sin would thus be punished by sin. Their own dishonor and disgrace, through the unfaithfulness of persons so near to them, would impress them with a sense of the dishonor done to God, the spiritual Husband of his people; their feeling of pain and shame in consequence would convey to them a clearer notion of the abhorrence which their offences had occasioned to God. But their punishment would become more severe, and their pain intensified by the Divine refusal to avenge them by punishing the lewdness that caused such dishonor. While punishment would prevent the sin and consequent reproach, impunity, or the postponement of punishment, would leave the offenders to go on in their course of sin and shame. Aben Ezra comments on this fourteenth verse as follows: "The sense is - It is not to be wondered at if the daughters commit whoredom; for they themselves, when they go up to the tops of the mountains to burn incense, eat and drink with harlots and commit whoredom - all of them. And, behold, the sense is, not that he shall not punish them at all, but he speaks in regard to, i.e. in comparison with, the fathers; for they teach them to commit whoredom doing according to their works. Perhaps the daughters are still little, therefore I shall not punish." Rashi thinks that this threatening refers to the disuse of the bitter waters of jealousy, so that suspected guilt could not be detected. But there is nothing to intimate such a reference; nor would it be in keeping with the scope of the passage. Again, some, as in the margin of the Authorized Version, read the words, not indicatively, but interrogatively - "Shall I not punish," etc.? This would require such a meaning to be read into the passage as the following: "Assuredly I shall punish them; and not the daughters and daughters-in-law only, but the parents and husbands still more severely, because of their greater criminality." Equally unsatisfactory is the explanation of Theodoret, who, taking פָקַד in a good sense, which it has with the accusative, understands it of God's refusing any protection or preservation of their daughters and spouses from outrage at the hands of a hostile soldiery, so that such sins as they themselves had been guilty in private, would be committed with the females of their family in public. For they themselves are separated with whores, and they sacrifice with harlots. The change of person appears to imply that God turns away with inexpressible disgust from such vileness, and, turning aside to a third party, explains the grounds of his procedure. The Qedesheth were females who devoted themselves to licentiousness in the service of Ashtaroth, the Sidonian Venus. Persons of this description were attached to idol temples and idolatrous worship in heathen lands in ancient times, as in India at the present time. The 'Speaker's Commentary' calls them "devotee-harlots," and cites an allusion to the custom from the Moabite Stone, as follows: "I did not kill the women and maidens, for I devoted them to Ashtar-kemosh." After stating the humiliating fact that fathers and husbands in Israel, instead of uniting with their wives in the worship of Jehovah, separated themselves, going aside with these female idolaters for the purpose of lewdness, and shared in their sacrificial feasts, the prophet, or rather God by the prophet, impatient of the recital of such shameless licentiousness, and indignant at such presumptuous sinning, closes abruptly with the declaration of the recklessness, and denunciation of the ruin of all such offenders, in the words - the people that doth not understand shall fall; margin, be punished; rather, dashed to the ground, or plunge into ruin (nilbat). Both Aben Ezra and Kimchi give from the Arabic, as an alternative sense of silbat, to fall into error.

Parallel Commentaries ...


Hebrew
I will not
לֹֽא־ (lō-)
Adverb - Negative particle
Strong's 3808: Not, no

punish
אֶפְק֨וֹד (’ep̄·qō·wḏ)
Verb - Qal - Imperfect - first person common singular
Strong's 6485: To visit, to oversee, muster, charge, care for, miss, deposit

your daughters
בְּנוֹתֵיכֶ֜ם (bə·nō·w·ṯê·ḵem)
Noun - feminine plural construct | second person masculine plural
Strong's 1323: A daughter

when
כִּ֣י (kî)
Conjunction
Strong's 3588: A relative conjunction

they prostitute themselves
תִזְנֶ֗ינָה (ṯiz·ne·nāh)
Verb - Qal - Imperfect - third person feminine plural
Strong's 2181: To commit adultery, to commit idolatry

[or]
וְעַל־ (wə·‘al-)
Conjunctive waw | Preposition
Strong's 5921: Above, over, upon, against

your daughters-in-law
כַּלּֽוֹתֵיכֶם֙ (kal·lō·w·ṯê·ḵem)
Noun - feminine plural construct | second person masculine plural
Strong's 3618: Daughter-in-law, bride

when
כִּ֣י (kî)
Conjunction
Strong's 3588: A relative conjunction

they commit adultery,
תְנָאַ֔פְנָה (ṯə·nā·’ap̄·nāh)
Verb - Piel - Imperfect - third person feminine plural
Strong's 5003: To commit adultery, to apostatize

because
כִּי־ (kî-)
Conjunction
Strong's 3588: A relative conjunction

the men themselves
הֵם֙ (hêm)
Pronoun - third person masculine plural
Strong's 1992: They

go off
יְפָרֵ֔דוּ (yə·p̄ā·rê·ḏū)
Verb - Piel - Imperfect - third person masculine plural
Strong's 6504: To break through, spread, separate

with
עִם־ (‘im-)
Preposition
Strong's 5973: With, equally with

prostitutes
הַזֹּנ֣וֹת (haz·zō·nō·wṯ)
Article | Noun - feminine plural
Strong's 2181: To commit adultery, to commit idolatry

and make sacrifices
יְזַבֵּ֑חוּ (yə·zab·bê·ḥū)
Verb - Piel - Imperfect - third person masculine plural
Strong's 2076: To slaughter for sacrifice

with
וְעִם־ (wə·‘im-)
Conjunctive waw | Preposition
Strong's 5973: With, equally with

cult prostitutes.
הַקְּדֵשׁ֖וֹת (haq·qə·ḏê·šō·wṯ)
Article | Adjective - feminine plural
Strong's 6948: A female devotee

So a people
וְעָ֥ם (wə·‘ām)
Conjunctive waw | Noun - masculine singular
Strong's 5971: A people, a tribe, troops, attendants, a flock

without
לֹֽא־ (lō-)
Adverb - Negative particle
Strong's 3808: Not, no

understanding
יָבִ֖ין (yā·ḇîn)
Verb - Qal - Imperfect - third person masculine singular
Strong's 995: To separate mentally, understand

will come to ruin.
יִלָּבֵֽט׃ (yil·lā·ḇêṭ)
Verb - Nifal - Imperfect - third person masculine singular
Strong's 3832: To overthrow, intransposed, to fall


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OT Prophets: Hosea 4:14 I will not punish your daughters when (Ho Hs Hos.)
Hosea 4:13
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