Hosea 5:6

Israel, moreover, will not be able to avert the threatening judgment by sacrifices. Jehovah will withdraw from the faithless generation, and visit it with His judgments. This is the train of thought in the next strophe (Hos 5:6-10). Hos 5:6. "They will go with their sheep and their oxen to seek Jehovah, and will not find Him: He has withdrawn Himself from them. Hos 5:7. They acted treacherously against Jehovah, for they have born strange children: now will the new moon devour them with their fields." The offering of sacrifices will be no help to them, because God has withdrawn Himself from them, and does not hear their prayers; for God has no pleasure in sacrifices which are offered in an impenitent state of mind (cf. Hos 6:6; Isa 1:11.; Jer 7:21.; Psa 50:7, Psa 50:8.). The reason for this is given in Hos 5:7. Bâgad, to act faithlessly, which is frequently applied to the infidelity of a wife towards her husband (e.g., Jer 3:20; Mal 2:14; cf. Exo 21:8), points to the conjugal relation in which Israel stood to Jehovah. Hence the figure which follows. "Strange children" are such as do not belong to the home (Deu 25:5), i.e., such as have not sprung from the conjugal union. In actual fact, the expression is equivalent to בּני זנוּנים in Hos 1:2; Hos 2:4, though zâr does not expressly mean "adulterous." Israel ought to have begotten children of God in the maintenance of the covenant with the Lord; but in its apostasy from God it had begotten an adulterous generation, children whom the Lord could not acknowledge as His own. "The new moon will devour them," viz., those who act so faithlessly. the meaning is not, "they will be destroyed on the next new moon;" but the new moon, as the festal season, on which sacrifices were offered (Sa1 20:6, Sa1 20:29; Isa 1:13-14), stands he…

The scope of this chapter is the same with that of the foregoing chapter, to discover the sin both of Israel and Judah, and to denounce the judgments of God against them. I. They are called to hearken to the charge (Hos 5:1, Hos 5:8). II. They are accused of many sins, which are here aggravated. 1. Persecution (Hos 5:1, Hos 5:2). 2. Spiritual whoredom (Hos 5:3, Hos 5:4). 3. Pride (Hos 5:5). 4. Apostasy from God (Hos 5:7). 5. The tyranny of the princes, and the tameness of the people in submitting to it (Hos 5:10, Hos 5:11). III. They are threatened with God's displeasure for their sins; he knows all their wickedness (Hos 5:3) and makes known his wrath against them for it (Hos 5:9). 1. They shall fall in their iniquity (Hos 5:5). 2. God will forsake them (Hos 5:6). 3. Their portions shall be devoured (Hos 5:7). 4. God will rebuke them, and pour out his wrath upon them (Hos 5:9, Hos 5:10). 5. They shall be oppressed (Hos 5:11). 6. God will be as a moth to them in secret judgments (Hos 5:12) and as a lion in public judgments (Hos 5:14). IV. They are blamed for the wrong course they took under their afflictions (Hos 5:13). V. It is intimated that they shall at length take a right course (Hos 5:15). The more generally these things are expressed of so much the more general use they are for our learning, and particularly for our admonition.

5:6-7 The people might think that they could win God’s favor with their sacrifices, but Hosea warned them that they would not find him; God had left them to the consequences of their sin.