41 Attention all Israelites! God's Message! God indicts the whole population: "No one is faithful. No one loves. No one knows the first thing about God. 2 All this cussing and lying and killing, theft and loose sex, sheer anarchy, one murder after another! 3 And because of all this, the very land itself weeps and everything in it is grief-stricken - animals in the fields and birds on the wing, even the fish in the sea are listless, lifeless. 4 "But don't look for someone to blame. No finger pointing! You, priest, are the one in the dock. 5 You stumble around in broad daylight, And then the prophets take over and stumble all night. Your mother is as bad as you.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Hosea 4:1-5
Commentary on Hosea 4:1-5
(Read Hosea 4:1-5)
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.