Hosea 4:13

you have abandoned me your God, and you are chasing after other gods on the tops of hills and mountains; you burn incense under oak trees, poplar trees, and other trees where there is nice/pleasing shade. So your daughters have become prostitutes, and your daughters-in-law have committed adultery.

Translation for Translators

In The King James Version

They sacrifice upon the tops of the mountains, and burn incense upon the hills, under oaks and poplars and elms, because the shadow thereof is good: therefore your daughters shall commit whoredom, and your spouses shall commit adultery.

In Context

12“ You my people request wooden idols to tell you what you should do! Like prostitutes who have left/abandoned their husbands,

14But it is not only your daughters whom I will punish for having become prostitutes, and it is not only your daughters-in-law whom I will punish for committing adultery, because the men also are having sex with prostitutes, and they offer sacrifices with the prostitutes who search for men at the shrines of the idols. They are all foolish people, and they will all be ruined.

Read all of Hosea 4

Cross References

2 Samuel 12:10You have despised me, and have taken Uriah’s wife to be your wife. So for many generations some of your descendants will die violently. [MTY, PRS]

2 Kings 23:7He also destroyed the rooms in the temple where the temple male prostitutes lived. That was where women wove robes that were used to worship the goddess Asherah.

Isaiah 1:29You will be ashamed because you worshiped idols under the oak trees that you considered to be sacred; you will be disgraced because you worshiped idols in the gardens where you chose to worship them.

Isaiah 57:7You have sex [EUP] with cult prostitutes on every hill and mountain, and you go there to offer sacrifices to your gods.

Jeremiah 3:6One day when Josiah was the king of Judah, Yahweh said to me, “Have you seen what the people of Israel have done? They have turned away from me, like a woman who has abandoned her husband and sleeps with other men. They have gone up on every hilltop and under every big tree and worshiped idols there [MET].

Ezekiel 6:13Some of your people’s corpses will lie among their idols around their altars, on every high hilltop and on all the mountaintops, under every big tree [DOU]—at all the places where they burned incense to honor their idols. Then they will know that I, Yahweh, have the power to do what I say that I will do.

Matthew Henry on Hosea 4:13-19

The Sins of the Priests and the People; Warning to Judah. ( b. c. 758.) 12 My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them: for the spirit of whoredoms hath caused them to err, and they have gone a whoring from under their God. 13 They sacrifice upon the tops of the mountains, and burn incense upon the hills, under oaks and poplars and elms, because the shadow thereof is good: therefore your daughters shall commit whoredom, and your spouses shall commit adultery. 14 I will not punish… Read the whole commentary →

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