Hosea 4:6

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge,.... This is not to be understood of those who are the Lord's people by special grace; for they cannot he destroyed, at least with everlasting

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.

My people: the divorce was not yet issued out, the ten tribes yet were in some sense Ammi. Are destroyed; not only in the prophetic style, are, because ere long they shall most certainly be destroyed, but in the course of the history it is plain in matter of fact; many of them were cut off by Pul king of Assyria, 2 Kings 15, and many were destroyed by the bloody and cruel tyranny of Menahem, and more were ruined in their estates by exactions and impositions. The civil wars, the seditions, the usurpations of some and the deposing of others, were things the prophet Hosea lived to see, and I believe speaks of here as things that had already destroyed many. For lack of knowledge of God, his law, his menaces, his providences, and government of the world. Had they known his holy nature, his jealousy for his own glory, his hatred of sin and his power to punish it, had they known their God, they would either have forborne to sin, or repented of what sins they had committed, and so prevented his wrath. Because thou: the prophet now turns his words from the people to the priests among them. The people’ s ignorance was much from the ignorance and profane humour of their priests, and this the prophet doth tacitly charge on the priests, to whom he speaks as to one particular person: Thou, who callest thyself, art accounted by the people, and goest under the name of a priest. Hast rejected knowledge: strange perverseness! they who should direct others, who should be teachers, are and will be ignorant, will not know, reject knowledge; detestest to know, as the Chaldee paraphrase. I will also reject thee; with equal dislike I will reject time, I will destroy your church constitution, and with that I will destroy your priesthood; and I will do this with detestation and abhorrence too. Thou hast forgotten the law of thy God: O Israel, and you, O priests, you have all sinned together, slighted and disrespected the law, broken all the precepts of it, set up other gods, other worship, other priests than the law directs. I will also forget; I will pay thee in thy own coin, I will forget, i. e. slight and disregard. Thy children; the people of Israel, the whole kingdom of the ten tribes; both those pretended priests and their ghostly children with them.

Hosea 4:6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.Ver. 6. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge] "My people" (there is the wonder of it), of whom it was wont to be said by the heathen, "Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people": and well it might: for what nation ever had God so nigh unto them, &c., and statutes and judgments so righteous, &c.? Deuteronomy 4:6-8; what nation ever had prophets and priests as they had, to teach Jacob his statutes and Israel his law? Deuteronomy 33:10. All means of knowledge they had that might be; so that God might say to them, as once Abijam did to Jeroboam and all Israel, "Ought you not to have known this?" 2 Chronicles 13:5; should ye not all "know the Lord from the least to the greatest?" should not your land be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea? Habakkuk 2:14. Doth not wisdom cry in your streets? and knowledge (in the abundance of means) bow down to you as trees do that are laden with fruit, so that a child may gather them? How is it then that you (my people) are yet so hard and blockish, as rude and ignorant of me and my will, of yourselves and your duties, as the blind Ethnics? For some of you have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame. Yea, "who is blind, but my servant? or deaf, as my messenger that I sent? who is blind as he that is perfect, and blind as the Lord’ s servant?" Isaiah 42:19. I speak it with grief and stomach, and therefore I so oft speak it. Surely to whomsoever much is given much is required; and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more, Luke 12:48. It is a grievous thing to receive the grace of God in vain, 2 Corinthians 6:1; and when for the time men might have been teachers, to have need to be taught the very first principles of the oracles of God, Hebrews 5:12. For if God will pour out his wrath upon the heathen that know him not, Jeremiah 10:25, who yet were left in the dark, to grope after him as they could, Acts 17:27; and if the poor philosophers (who had but the rush candle of nature’ s dim light to work by) were yet delivered up to a reprobate sense, because they glorified God no better, Romans 1:28; oh the bloody weals that he will make upon the backs of his non-proficients, sots and dullards in his school! Ingentia beneficia, flagitia supplicia. Are destroyed] Or, silenced, as Matthew 22:12. The Chaldee rendereth it obrutuerunt, they are besotted, and so fitted for destruction; for Deus quem destruit dementat.

(6) For lack of knowledge, which you, O priest, should have kept alive in their hearts. The knowledge of God is life eternal. (Comp. John 17:3.) The Lord’s “controversy” repudiates the entire priesthood, as they had rejected the true knowledge of God. They had inclined to calf-worship, had been vacillating respecting Baal, and had connived at moral offences. If, on the other hand, with most commentators, we consider the people themselves as thus addressed, the passage refers to the cessation of the position of priesthood, which every member of the true theocracy ought to have maintained. (Comp. Exodus 19:6.) The people should no longer be priests to Jehovah.

Verse 6. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge] They have not the knowledge of God, nor of sacred things, nor of their own interest, nor of the danger to which they are exposed. They walk on blindly, and perish. Because thou hast rejected knowledge] So they might have become wise, had they not rejected the means of improvement. Thou shalt be no priest to me] If this be the true reading, there must be reference to some particular priest, well known, to whom these words are personally addressed; unless by priest the whole priesthood is meant, and then it may apply to the priests of Jeroboam's calves.

6. My people are destroyed] The prophet cannot escape, because the people is on the brink of ruin through the prophet’s fault. It is the perfect of prophetic certitude, ‘my people is already as good as destroyed.’ for lack of knowledge] More precisely, by reason of (their) lack of knowledge. The ‘knowledge of God’ is meant (see on Hosea 4:1). thou hast rejected knowledge] Thou is emphatically expressed in the Hebrew. ‘Knowledge’, viz. of God’s revealed will, was theoretically a deposit in the priestly order (Deuteronomy 33:10; Ezekiel 44:23; Malachi 2:7). There is no reason to think that the ‘priest-people’ of Israel is addressed; there was no priest-people till after the return from exile. forgotten … forget] To ‘forget’ what has been committed to one’s charge is the same as to ignore it. The penalty of the priests is not really distinct from that of the people (see Hosea 4:9); the priestly office could in no full sense be maintained in captivity. the law of thy God] ‘Thy God’, because the priest was specially ‘brought near’ to Jehovah. ‘The law’, Heb. tôrâh, will cover oral as well as written instructions (comp. Deuteronomy 17:11), but a later passage (Hosea 8:12) shows that a written legislation existed in Hosea’s time. The contents of this may be presumed from Hosea’s language to have been, at any rate to a large extent, concerned with applications of religious morality. thy children] i.e. the members of the priestly caste; ‘thy brethren’ would be more consistent with the figure (comp. ‘thy mother’, Hosea 4:5).

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge - “My people are,” not, “is.” This accurately represents the Hebrew . The word “people” speaks of them as a whole; are, relates to the individuals of whom that whole is composed.

The religious leaders are chiefly responsible for the sins of the people, Hosea 4:4-8.Hosea 4:4, as it stands now, offers considerable difficulties to the interpreter, and has been variously explained.