Bible Strands
Hosea 4:5
You will stumble by day, and the prophet will stumble with you by night; so I will destroy your mother—
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — God speaks through Hosea to Israel and its religious leaders during a period of covenant failure. The prophet addresses a people who have abandoned divine instruction and replaced it with self-directed contention.
The words — כָּשַׁל (kha.Shal) means he will stumble, and דָּמִיתִי (da.Mi.ti) means I will destroy. These verbs describe the collapse of spiritual guidance and the resulting divine judgment.
The thread — The motif of maternal destruction appears in Jeremiah 15:8 and Hosea 2:2, while Galatians 4:26 contrasts earthly failure with the Jerusalem above. These references trace a pattern of covenant consequence and spiritual lineage.
Why it lands — The text states that rejecting knowledge produces collective disorientation and divine rejection before inferring that spiritual leadership shares in the people's collapse. It requires readers to examine their own reliance on revealed instruction rather than human presumption.
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
Therefore shalt thou fall in the day, and the prophet also shall fall with thee in the night, and I will destroy thy mother.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 15:8 I will make their widows more numerous than the sand of the sea. I will bring a destroyer at noon against the mothers of young men. I will suddenly bring upon them anguish and dismay.
- Hosea 2:2 Rebuke your mother, rebuke her, for she is not My wife, and I am not her husband. Let her remove the adultery from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.
- Galatians 4:26 But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.
- Zechariah 13:2 And on that day, declares the LORD of Hosts, I will erase the names of the idols from the land, and they will no longer be remembered. I will also remove the prophets and the spirit of impurity from the land.
- Isaiah 9:13 But the people did not return to Him who struck them; they did not seek the LORD of Hosts.
- Isaiah 50:1 This is what the LORD says: “Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce with which I sent her away? Or to which of My creditors did I sell you? Look, you were sold for your iniquities, and for your transgressions your mother was sent away.
- Jeremiah 6:4 ‘Prepare for battle against her; rise up, let us attack at noon. Woe to us, for the daylight is fading; the evening shadows grow long.
- Jeremiah 6:12 Their houses will be turned over to others, their fields and wives as well, for I will stretch out My hand against the inhabitants of the land,” declares the LORD.
- Jeremiah 8:10 Therefore I will give their wives to other men and their fields to new owners. For from the least of them to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; from prophet to priest, all practice deceit.
- Jeremiah 14:15 Therefore this is what the LORD says about the prophets who prophesy in My name: I did not send them, yet they say, ‘No sword or famine will touch this land.’ By sword and famine these very prophets will meet their end!