Hosea 9:4 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Hosea 9:4
They shall not offer wine offerings to the LORD, neither shall they be pleasing unto him: their sacrifices shall be unto them as the bread of mourners; all that eat thereof shall be polluted: for their bread for their soul shall not come into the house of the LORD.
to pour out · verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural
wine
יַיִן֮ya.Yin
H3196
wine (as fermented) · noun, common masculine singular absolute
LORD
לַיהוָ֥הla.Yah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · preposition + proper noun, a title
pleasing
יֶֽעֶרְבוּye.'er.vu-
H6149
to be agreeable · verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural
sacrifices
זִבְחֵיהֶ֗םziv.chei.Hem
H2077
properly · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine plural
bread
כְּלֶ֤חֶםke.Le.chem
H3899
food (for man or beast) · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct
mourners
אוֹנִים֙'o.Nim
H205
strictly nothingness · noun, common masculine plural absolute
eat
אֹכְלָ֖יו'o.khe.Lav
H398
to eat (literally or figuratively) · verb, qal active participle, masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
polluted
יִטַמָּ֑אוּyi.ta.Ma.'u
H2930
to be foul · verb, hithpael imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural
bread
לַחְמָ֣םlach.Mam
H3899
food (for man or beast) · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine plural
soul
לְנַפְשָׁ֔םle.naf.Sham
H5315
properly · preposition + noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine plural
come
יָב֖וֹאya.Vo'
H935
to go or come (in a wide variety of applications) · verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
house
בֵּ֥יתbeit
H1004
a house (in the greatest variation of applications · noun, common masculine singular construct
LORD
יְהוָֽהYah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · proper noun, a title
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Deuteronomy 26:14 I have not eaten thereof in my mourning, neither have I taken away ought thereof for any unclean use, nor given ought thereof for the dead:…
Jeremiah 6:20 To what purpose cometh there to me incense from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a far country? your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor y…
Hosea 8:13 They sacrifice flesh for the sacrifices of mine offerings, and eat it; but the LORD accepteth them not; now will he remember their iniquity,…
Haggai 2:13-14 Then said Haggai, If one that is unclean by a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean? And the priests answered and said, It shall…
Ezekiel 24:17 Forbear to cry, make no mourning for the dead, bind the tire of thine head upon thee, and put on thy shoes upon thy feet, and cover not thy…
Hosea 3:4 For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and wi…
Joel 2:14 Who knoweth if he will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind him; even a meat offering and a drink offering unto the LORD your God?
Exodus 40:23 And he set the bread in order upon it before the LORD; as the LORD had commanded Moses.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Hosea 9:1-6
Here, I. The people of Israel are charged with spiritual adultery: O Israel! thou hast gone a whoring from thy God, Hos 9:1. Their covenant with God was a marriage-covenant, by which they were joined to him as their God, renouncing all others. But when they set up idols and worshipped them, when they fled to creatures for succour and put a confidence in them, they went a whoring from God as their God, and honoured the pretenders and rivals with the affection, adoration, and confidence, which were due to God only. Other people were idolaters, but that sin was not, in them, going a whoring from God, as it was in Israel that had been married to him. Note, The sins of those who have made a profe…
offer wine offerings--literally, "pour as a libation (Exo 30:9; Lev 23:13).
neither shall they be pleasing unto him--as being offered on a profane soil.
sacrifices . . . as the bread of mourners--which was unclean (Deu 26:14; Jer 16:7; Eze 24:17).
their bread for their soul--their offering for the expiation of their soul [CALVIN], (Lev 17:11). Rather, "their bread for their sustenance ('soul' being often used for the animal life, Gen 14:21, Margin) shall not come into the Lord's house"; it shall only subserve their own uses, not My worship.
Adam Clarke on Hosea 9:4
As the bread of mourners - By the law, a dead body, and every thing that related to it, the house where it lay, and the persons who touched it, were all polluted and unclean, and whatever they touched was considered as defiled. See Deu 26:14; Num 19:11, Num 19:13, Num 19:14.
For their bread for their soul - The bread for the common support of life shall not be sanctified to them by having the first-fruits presented at the temple.
John Gill on Hosea 9:4
They shall not offer wine offerings to the Lord,.... This is either a threatening of the cessation of sacrifices, being carried into Assyria, a strange land, where it was not lawful to offer sacrifice, there being no temple nor altar to offer in or at; and so as they would not offer to the Lord when they should, now they shall not if they would: or this respects not, the future time of their exile, but their present time now, as Kimchi observes; and so is a reproof of their present sacrifices, which are forbidden to be observed; because they were offered not in faith, nor in sincerity, but hypocritically, and before their calves: besides, the future tease is sometimes put for the present; an…
The Church Fathers
Let not the people flatter themselves as if they could be safe from contagion of sin, communicating with a sinful priest and yielding their obedience to the unjust and unlawful episcopacy of their leader, when the divine censure threatens through the prophet Hosea and says, "Their sacrifices shall be like the bread of mourning: all who eat them shall be defiled." [This] teaching obviously [shows] that all are indeed involved in sin who have been contaminated by the sacrifice of a blasphemous and unjust priest.
Having collected the fruit of the vine into the wine-vats, they offered the firstlings as a libation to the demons, and not to the God who gave them. They also offered loaves of bread as firstfruits of the harvest—except that the sacrifice will become for them defiled and impure, he says, and the offerings will be considered as mourning breads (that is, disgusting, impure and odious). For what reason? For the law considered unclean anyone who approached a dead body either by blood relationship or rather by the very touching of the body. Therefore it was easy for the relatives or friends of the dead person to become unclean during mourning, since they handled the dead body and since they were willing to do for him what was customary. And whatever they touched became unclean. Therefore the mourning bread is that bread which was at hand as food for those who were mourning for the dead; for those who strive to avoid contamination with a dead body it is considered terrible even to taste this bread. Wherefore the breads themselves are defiled and rejected, even though they may have been offered as firstfruits of the harvest. "Those who eat them will become unclean." They will be useful only to their souls, that is, as a food for them.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Drink-offering — Consisted of wine (Num. 15:5; Hos. 9:4) poured around the altar (Ex. 30:9). Joined with meat-offerings (Num. 6:15, 17; 2 Kings 16:13; Joel 1:9, 13; 2:14), presented daily (Ex. 29:40), on the Sabbath…
Funeral — Burying was among the Jews the only mode of disposing of corpses (Gen. 23:19; 25:9; 35:8, 9, etc.). The first traces of burning the dead are found in 1 Sam. 31:12. The burning of the body was affixed…
Purification — The process by which a person unclean, according to the Levitical law, and thereby cut off from the sanctuary and the festivals, was restored to the enjoyment of all these privileges. The great…
Bread · .Bread of affliction — .Bread of affliction
Burial · Followed by a feast — Followed by a feast
Hypocrisy · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Hosea 9:4
4. They shall not offer wine offerings to the Lord, neither shall they be pleasing unto him: their sacrifices shall be unto them as the bread of mourners; all that eat thereof shall be polluted: for their bread for their soul shall not come into the house of the Lord
4. Non libabunt Jehovae vinum, et non dulcia erunt illi libamina (vel, ipsi non erunt grati et suaves Domino) sacrificia ipsorum sicut panis lugentium ipsis: quicunque comederint polluentur; quia panis ipsorum pro anima ipsorum, non veniet in domum Jehovae.
It is uncertain whether the Prophet testifies here, that they should lose their labour and their oil (as they say) when they sacrificed to God; or whether he dec…
"They will not remain in the land of Jehovah: Ephraim returns to Egypt, and they will eat unclean things in the land of Asshur. Hos 9:4. They will not pour out wine to Jehovah, and their slain-offerings will not please Him: like bread of mourning are they to Him; all who eat it become unclean: for their bread is for themselves, it does not come into the house of Jehovah." Because they have fallen away from Jehovah, He will drive them out of His land. The driving away is described as a return to Egypt, as in Hos 8:13; but Asshur is mentioned immediately afterwards as the actual land of banishment. That this threat is not to be understood as implying that they will be carried away to Egypt as…
In exile, the Israelites could not offer legitimate sacrifices because any sacrifice in a foreign land was unclean and defiled.
Rashi on Hosea 9:4
They shall not pour libations Heb. יִסְּכוּ, an expression of נֶסֶךְ, libation.
they will not please Him Their offering will not be pleasant to Him.
like bread of mourners Heb. אוֹנִים, like bread of robbery that comes through strength and might.
for their bread is for themselves It is fit for them for food, but not to come into the house of the Lord. Another explanation is: אוֹנִים, like bread of mourners, which is contaminated, and the end of the verse proves it: all those who partake thereof become contaminated.
