Barnes' Notes on Hosea 4:11

A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.

Notes on the Whole Bible
Albert Barnes (1798–1870) · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.

Whoredom and wine and new wine take away the heart - (Literally, “takes away”). Wine and fleshly sin are pictured as blended in one, to deprive man of his affections and reason and understanding, and to leave him brutish and irrational. In all the relations of life toward God and man, reason and will are guided by the affections. And so, in God’s language, the “heart” stands for the “understanding” as well as the “affections,” because it directs the understanding, and the understanding, bereft of true affections, and under the rule of passion, becomes senseless. Besides the perversion of the understanding, each of these sins blunts and dulls the fineness of the intellect; much more, both combined. The stupid sottishness of the confirmed voluptuary is a whole, of which each act of sensual sin worked its part. The Pagan saw this clearly, although, without the grace of God, they did not act on what they saw to be true and right. This, the sottishness of Israel, destroying their understanding, was the ground of their next folly, that they ascribed to “their stock” the office of God. “Corruption of manners and superstition” (it has often been observed) “go hand in hand.” return to 'Top of Page'

Read Hosea 4:11 →Read the full chapter →John Gill's Exposition →Jamieson, Fausset & Brown →Wesley's Explanatory Notes →Treasury of Scriptural Knowledge →Keil & Delitzsch →

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