Commentaries:
Barnes' Notes
For they shall eat, and not have enough - This is almost a proverbial saying of Holy Scripture, and, as such, has manifold applications. In the way of nature, it comes true in those, who, under God' s affictive Hand in famine or siege, "eat" what they have, but have "not enough," and perish with hunger. It comes true in those, who, through bodily disease, are not nourished by their food. Yet not less true is it of those who, through their own insatiate desires, are never satisfied, but crave the more greedily, the more they have. Their sin of covetousness becomes their torment.
They shall commit whoredom and not increase - Literally, "they have committed whoredom." The time spoken of is perhaps changed, because God would not speak of their future sin, as certain. There is naturally too a long interval between this sin and its possible fruit, which may be marked by this change of time. The sin was past, the effect was to be seen hereafter. They used all means, lawful and unlawful, to increase their offspring, but they failed, even because they used forbidden means. God' s curse rested upon those means. Single marriage, according to God' s law, "they twain shall be one flesh," yields in a nation larger increase than polygamy. God turns illicit sexual intercourse to decay. His curse is upon it.
Because they have left off to take heed to the Lord - Literally, "to watch, observe, the Lord." The eye of the soul should be upon God, watching and waiting to know all indications of His will, all guidings of His Eye. So the Psalmist says, "As the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hands of her mistress, even so our eyes wait upon the Lord our God, until He have mercy upon us" Psalms 123:2. The Angels of God, great and glorious as they are, "do alway behold the Face of the Father" Matthew 18:10, at once filled with His love, and wrapped in contemplation, and reading therein His will, to do it. The lawless and hopeless ways of Israel sprang from their neglecting to watch and observe God. For as soon as man ceases to watch God, he falls, of himself, into sin. The eye which is not fixed on God, is soon astray amid the vanities and pomps and lusts of the world. So it follows;
Other Barnes' Notes entries containing Hosea 4:10:
Leviticus 26:3-45
Job 1:3
Joel 2:26
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