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Selected Verse: Hosea 4:2 - King James
Verse |
Translation |
Text |
Ho 4:2 |
King James |
By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood. |
Summary Of Commentaries Associated With The Selected Verse
A Commentary, Critical, Practical, and Explanatory on the Old and New Testaments, by Robert Jamieson, A.R. Fausset and David Brown [1882] |
they break out--bursting through every restraint.
blood toucheth blood--literally, "bloods." One act of bloodshed follows another without any interval between (see Kg2 15:8-16, Kg2 15:25; Mic 7:2). |
Notes on the Bible, by Albert Barnes, [1834] |
By swearing, and lying ... - Literally, "swearing or cursing" , "and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery!" The words in Hebrew are nouns of action. The Hebrew form is very vivid and solemn. It is far more forcible than if he had said, "They swear, lie, kill, and steal." It expresses that these sins were continual, that nothing else (so to speak) was going on; that it was all one scene of such sins, one course of them, and of nothing besides; as we say more familiarly, "It was all, swearing, lying, killing, stealing, committing adultery." It is as if the prophet, seeing with a sight above nature, a vision from God, saw, as in a picture, what was going on, all around, within and without, and summed up in this brief picture, all which he saw. This it was and nothing but this, which met his eyes, wherever he looked, whatever he heard, "swearing, lying, killing, stealing, committing adultery." The prophet had before said, that the ten tribes were utterly lacking in all truth, all love, all knowledge of God. But where there are none of these, "there," in all activity, will be the contrary vices. When the land or the soul is empty of the good, it will be full of the evil. "They break out," i. e., burst through all bounds, set to restrain them, as a river bursts its banks and overspreads all things or sweeps all before it. "And blood toucheth blood," literally, "bloods touch bloods" . The blood was poured so continuously and in such torrents, that it flowed on, until stream met stream and formed one wide inundation of blood. |
Commentary on the Old Testament, by Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch [1857-78] |
"Swearing, and lying, and murdering, and stealing, and committing adultery; they break in, and blood reaches to blood." The enumeration of the prevailing sins and crimes commences with infin. absoll., to set forth the acts referred to as such with the greater emphasis. 'Alâh, to swear, in combination with kichēsh, signifies false swearing (= אלוה שׁוא in Hos 10:4; compare the similar passage in Jer 7:9); but we must not on that account take kichēsh as subordinate to 'âlâh, or connect them together, so as to form one idea. Swearing refers to the breach of the second commandment, stealing to that of the eighth; and the infinitives which follow enumerate the sins against the fifth, the seventh, and the sixth commandments. With pârâtsū the address passes into the finite tense (Luther follows the lxx and Vulg., and connects it with what precedes; but this is a mistake). The perfects, pârâtsū and nâgâ‛ū, are not preterites, but express a completed act, reaching from the past into the present. Pârats to tear, to break, signifies in this instance a violent breaking in upon others, for the purpose of robbery and murder, "grassari as פריצים, i.e., as murderers and robbers" (Hitzig), whereby one bloody deed immediately followed another (Eze 18:10). Dâmı̄m: blood shed with violence, a bloody deed, a capital crime. |
Explanatory Notes on the Whole Bible, by John Wesley [1754-65] |
Break out - As waters that swell above all banks. Toucheth blood - Slaughters are multiplied; so that the end of one is the beginning of another. |
Adam Clarke Commentary on the Whole Bible - Published 1810-1826 |
By swearing, and lying - Where there is no truth there will be lies and perjury; for false swearing is brought in to confirm lying statements. And when there is no mercy, killing, slaying, and murders, will be frequent. And where there is no knowledge of God, no conviction of his omnipresence and omniscience, private offenses, such as stealing, adulteries, etc., will prevail. These, sooner or later, break out, become a flood, and carry all before them. Private stealing will assume the form of a public robbery, and adulteries become fashionable, especially among the higher orders; and suits of crim. con. render them more public, scandalous, and corrupting. By the examination of witnesses, and reading of infamous letters in a court of justice, people are taught the wiles and stratagems to be used to accomplish these ends, and prevent detection; and also how to avoid those circumstances which have led to the detection of others. Every report of such matters is an experimental lecture on successful debauchery.
Blood toucheth blood - Murders are not only frequent, but assassinations are mutual. Men go out to kill each other; as in our duels, the frenzy of cowards; and as there is no law regarded, and no justice in the land, the nearest akin slays the murderer. Even in our land, where duels are so frequent, if a man kill his antagonist, it is murder; and so generally brought in by an honest coroner and his jury. It is then brought into court; but who is hanged for it? The very murder is considered as an affair of honor, though it began in a dispute about a prostitute; and it is directed to be brought in manslaughter; and the murderer is slightly fined for having hurried his neighbor, perhaps once his friend, into the eternal world, with all his imperfections on his head! No wonder that a land mourns where these prevail; and that God should have a controversy with it. Such crimes as these are sufficient to bring God's curse upon any land. And how does God show his displeasure? See the following verse. |
2 The good man is perished out of the earth: and there is none upright among men: they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man his brother with a net.
25 But Pekah the son of Remaliah, a captain of his, conspired against him, and smote him in Samaria, in the palace of the king's house, with Argob and Arieh, and with him fifty men of the Gileadites: and he killed him, and reigned in his room.
8 In the thirty and eighth year of Azariah king of Judah did Zachariah the son of Jeroboam reign over Israel in Samaria six months.
9 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, as his fathers had done: he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.
10 And Shallum the son of Jabesh conspired against him, and smote him before the people, and slew him, and reigned in his stead.
11 And the rest of the acts of Zachariah, behold, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel.
12 This was the word of the LORD which he spake unto Jehu, saying, Thy sons shall sit on the throne of Israel unto the fourth generation. And so it came to pass.
13 Shallum the son of Jabesh began to reign in the nine and thirtieth year of Uzziah king of Judah; and he reigned a full month in Samaria.
14 For Menahem the son of Gadi went up from Tirzah, and came to Samaria, and smote Shallum the son of Jabesh in Samaria, and slew him, and reigned in his stead.
15 And the rest of the acts of Shallum, and his conspiracy which he made, behold, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel.
16 Then Menahem smote Tiphsah, and all that were therein, and the coasts thereof from Tirzah: because they opened not to him, therefore he smote it; and all the women therein that were with child he ripped up.
10 If he beget a son that is a robber, a shedder of blood, and that doeth the like to any one of these things,
9 Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods whom ye know not;
4 They have spoken words, swearing falsely in making a covenant: thus judgment springeth up as hemlock in the furrows of the field.