Bible Strands
Hosea 4:12
My people consult their wooden idols, and their divining rods inform them. For a spirit of prostitution leads them astray and they have played the harlot against their God.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — God addresses Israel through the prophet Hosea during a period of national spiritual decline, immediately following warnings about wine-induced confusion and preceding descriptions of idolatrous mountain sacrifices.
The words — The Hebrew phrase ר֫וּחַ זְנוּנִים (Ru.ach ze.nu.Nim) literally translates to "a spirit of prostitution[s]," describing the compulsive force driving the people to seek guidance from wooden idols and divining rods.
The thread — This motif of idolatrous consultation and spiritual adultery recurs in Jeremiah 2:27, Hosea 5:4, and Habakkuk 2:19, where silent wood and stone are falsely credited with paternal authority and prophetic guidance.
Why it lands — The text states that a compulsive spirit of spiritual adultery drives Israel to seek direction from wooden idols and divining rods rather than God. It demands the reader abandon all alternative sources of guidance and recognize that seeking divine counsel through created objects constitutes treachery against God.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
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.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 2:27 say to a tree, ‘You are my father,’ and to a stone, ‘You gave me birth.’ They have turned their backs to Me and not their faces. Yet in the time of trouble, they say, ‘Rise up and save us!’
- Hosea 5:4 Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God, for a spirit of prostitution is within them, and they do not know the LORD.
- Habakkuk 2:19 Woe to him who says to wood, ‘Awake!’ or to silent stone, ‘Arise!’ Can it give guidance? Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, yet there is no breath in it at all.”
- Numbers 15:39 These will serve as tassels for you to look at, so that you may remember all the commandments of the LORD, that you may obey them and not prostitute yourselves by following your own heart and your own eyes.
- Deuteronomy 31:16 And the LORD said to Moses, “You will soon rest with your fathers, and these people will rise up and prostitute themselves with the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake Me and break the covenant I have made with them.
- Isaiah 44:18 They do not comprehend or discern, for He has shut their eyes so they cannot see and closed their minds so they cannot understand.
- Leviticus 17:7 They must no longer offer their sacrifices to the goat demons to which they have prostituted themselves. This will be a permanent statute for them for the generations to come.’
- Leviticus 20:5 then I will set My face against that man and his family and cut off from among their people both him and all who follow him in prostituting themselves with Molech.
- 2 Chronicles 21:13 but you have walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and have caused Judah and the people of Jerusalem to prostitute themselves, just as the house of Ahab prostituted itself. You have also killed your brothers, your father’s family, who were better than you.
- Psalms 73:27 Those far from You will surely perish; You destroy all who are unfaithful to You.