Hosea 4:4-5

Yet let no man strive, nor reprove another Bishop Horsley translates this clause, By no means let any one expostulate, nor let any one reprove; adding, by way of paraphrase, “For all expostulation and reproof will be lost upon this people, such are their stubbornness anal obstinacy. For my people are as they that strive (Are exactly like those who will contend, Horsley) with the priest “To contend with the priest, the authorized interpreter of the law, and the typical intercessor between God and the people, was the highest species of contumacy and disobedience, and by the law was a capital offence, Deuteronomy 17:12. God tells the prophet that contumacy and perverseness, even in this degree, were become the general character of the people; that the national obstinacy, and contempt of the remonstrances and reproofs of the prophets, were such as might be compared with the stubbornness of an individual who, at the peril of his life, would arraign and disobey the judicial decisions of God's priests.” In other words, that there was no modesty, nor fear of God or man, left among them, but they would contend with their teachers, reprovers, and counsellors. The LXX. translate this clause, Ο δε λαος

μου ως αντιλεγομενος ιερευς, My people are as a gainsaying priest, that is, as Houbigant interprets it, they follow the rebellion of the priest: or, are as wicked as those priests who infamously desert the service of God for that of idols. Pocock on the place quotes a MS. Arabic version, which considers the words as declarative, and translates them accordingly; a sense which is approved by Archbishop Newcome, who renders the verse, Yet no man contendeth, and no man reproveth; and as is the provocation of the priest, so is that of my people. While every kind of wickedness abounded, and crimes of all sorts were openly committed from one end of the land to the other, there was no person, either prophet, priest, or magistrate, who protested against such vices, or steadily opposed them. Therefore shalt thou fall The last sentence was addressed to the prophet, “Thy people, O prophet;” this to the people themselves, “Thou, O stubborn people.” This sudden conversion of the speech of the principal speaker, from one to another of the different persons of the scene, is frequent in the prophets. In the day Not for want of light to see thy way; but in the full daylight of divine instruction thou shalt fall. Even at the rising of that light which is for the lighting of every man that cometh into the world. In this daytime, when our Lord himself visited them, the Jews made their last false step, and fell. Thou shalt fall when it is least probable; when thou thinkest thy state most secure and prosperous. And the prophet also, &c., in the night “In the night of ignorance, which shall close thy day, the prophet shall fall with thee; that is, the order of prophets among you shall cease.” Thus Bishop Horsley, who understands the words as spoken of true prophets. But it seems more probable that they are intended of false prophets, and that the meaning is, that their revelations, to which they pretended in the night, or in the darkness of ignorance and error, should be delusive and dangerous ones. Or, the people were to fall by day, the prophets by night, because the ruin of the latter would be the consequence of the ruin of the former: the prophets would then fall after the people, when the people, being destroyed, it should appear that the prophets had spoken falsely by predicting prosperity. And I will destroy thy mother That is, the mother city, the metropolis. So Capellus, Houbigant, and Archbishop Newcome. If the prophet be considered as addressing the ten tribes only, Samaria is meant; but if he addressed the children of Israel in general, then Jerusalem must be intended: which city, and not Samaria, was the metropolis of the whole nation.