Hosea 4:1, commentary and pictures

The Lord speaks to His people Israel to declare His controversy with them because truth and mercy and knowledge of Him are gone from the land, and their forgetting His law and multiplying transgression in falsehood and violence brings shame and punishment that falls upon the land and all living in it. That same godless condition was fearfully fulfilled when the Scriptures were banished under Romish power, leaving priests and people without the light of God's law and giving free course to fraud and avarice and debauchery and bloodshed under moral and intellectual paralysis. False shepherds who turn men from God's law to human theories produce that prevailing impiety, which marks the world in the present day and will meet its full judgment upon mystic Babylon. The controversy centers on trampling God's law by human laws, especially in setting aside His memorial of creation for Sunday and demanding all conform to it though few honor His rest. He therefore holds His people and His institutions accountable for selfishness and worldliness, calling them to purge defilement, seek Him diligently, and prepare for the coming of the Lord while repentance is still possible.

Israel's Charge and Setting

Hear the word of the Lord is a message addressed to the children of Israel, warning that forgetting His law and increasing in transgression would bring shame and punishment. It belongs to the time before the ten tribes went into captivity and before the northern kingdom fell, when the people disobeyed God and treated His law as worthless. Disregard for His law opened the way for widespread wickedness, including false swearing and lying and killing and stealing and adultery, until bloodshed spread through the land. That charge against Israel parallels the corruption of the world before the Flood and of Sodom, where lawlessness likewise reached the point of divine judgment.

The absence of truth and mercy and knowledge of God in the land is the ground of the Lord's controversy with its inhabitants. That controversy leads to the consequences for transgression set out in the following verses, where the curse falls upon the land and its creatures. The curse grows as widespread and deep as the transgression itself.

Later and Future Fulfillments

The absence of truth and mercy and knowledge of God in the land was fearfully and strikingly fulfilled in the world under Romish power at the noon of the papacy, when the word of God was banished. With the Holy Scriptures almost unknown alike to people and priests, with papal leaders hating the light that would reveal sin, and with God's law as the standard of righteousness removed, there was no truth nor mercy nor knowledge of God in the land. Banishing God's Word produced unlimited exercise of power and unrestrained vice, with fraud and avarice and profligacy prevailing and crimes committed to gain wealth or position. The vilest debauchery filled the palaces of popes and prelates, while swearing and lying and killing and stealing and adultery broke out until blood touched blood. For centuries there was no progress in learning or arts or civilization, under a moral and intellectual paralysis upon Christendom.

That condition comes from false shepherds turning people away from the laws of the kingdom of God to exalt their own theories and suppositions in opposition to God's law, producing prevailing impiety and growing wickedness. The same word will be fulfilled in the future when their work reacts upon themselves and the judgment of God falls upon mystic Babylon. The world without truth and mercy and knowledge of God, against whose inhabitants God brings a charge, characterizes the world in the present day.

God has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land because there is no truth and no knowledge of God among them, shown when those who trample upon God's law make human laws and force the people to accept them. Men blinded by error take their words from the lips of priests and human lawmakers, devise and plan what to do, and suppose it does not matter if they do not keep the law of God instituted in Eden when the foundations of the earth were laid and all the sons of God shouted for joy. This applies to demanding that the few in number conform to the laws of the land because the whole world keeps Sunday. God's memorial was then given that man might honor the living God who made the world in six days and sanctified and blessed the day of His rest, and rejecting that memorial for Sunday is the controversy announced.

Accountability and Present Application

The Lord holds people accountable where there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land, and this accountability falls upon publishing houses whose commercial work and worldly ambition reveal an order of things He cannot accept, carrying with it a warning of loss. The controversy is with managers of publishing houses and sanitariums for taking the position that the institutions with which they are connected are undenominational. God has chosen Seventh-day Adventists as His peculiar people to stand on a high plane and carry forward His work, and to them, if they are faithful, He will make known His will.

Selfishness and covetousness mingled with every part of the Lord's work defile it and dishonor Him and must be purged. Every institution is to stand in heaven-born righteousness, not dealing selfishly with another institution carrying a different line of God's work, but blending interests together. It is a call to awake out of sleep and become workers together with God, not acting with anger and unchristlike deeds, but diligently seeking the Lord, studying His Word to know and do His will, calling on Him in great necessity, and showing repentance that needeth not to be repented of. The state of the inhabitants of the land set forth in the chapter is connected with a message calling God's people to prepare for the coming of the Lord.

The Lord has a controversy with people guilty of wrongdoing, as seen in His charge concerning Fannie and Caldwell over their conduct toward each other. He brings a charge against people for departing from His principles, with His controversy directed at those whose conduct and decisions have brought embarrassment on His cause despite repeated warnings and counsel. They are accountable for their actions, but repentance and a changed character are still possible.