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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Hosea 4:5 - 4:5
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“And so wilt thou stumble by day, and the prophet with thee will also stumble by night, and I will destroy thy mother.” Kâshal is not used here with reference to the sin, as Simson supposes, but for the punishment, and signifies to fall, in the sense of to perish, as in Hos 14:2; Isa 31:3, etc. הַיּוֹם is not to-day, or in the day when the punishment shall fall, but “by day,” interdiu, on account of the antithesis לָיְלָה, as in Neh 4:16. נָבִיא, used without an article in the most indefinite generality, refers to false prophets - not of Baal, however, but of Jehovah as worshipped under the image of a calf - who practised prophesying as a trade, and judging from 1Ki 22:6, were very numerous in the kingdom of Israel. The declaration that the people should fall by day and the prophets by night, does not warrant our interpreting the day and night allegorically, the former as the time when the way of right is visible, and the latter as the time when the way is hidden or obscured; but according to the parallelism of the clauses, it is to be understood as signifying that the people and the prophets would fall at all times, by night and by day. “There would be no time free from the slaughter, either of individuals in the nation at large, or of false prophets” (Rosenmüller). In the second half of the verse, the destruction of the whole nation and kingdom is announced ('ēm is the whole nation, as in Hos 2:2; Heb 4:1).