They ask a piece of wood for advice! They think a stick can tell them the future! Longing after idols has made them foolish. They have played the prostitute, serving other gods and deserting their God.
Parallel translations
- WEB My people consult with their wooden idol, and answer to a stick of wood. Indeed the spirit of prostitution has led them astray, and they have been unfaithful to their God.
- KJV 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.
- BSB 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.
- NKJV My people ask counsel from their wooden idols, And their staff informs them. For the spirit of harlotry has caused them to stray, And they have played the harlot against their God.
- NASB My people consult their wooden idol, and their diviner’s wand informs them; For a spirit of infidelity has led them astray, And they have been unfaithful, departing from their God.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
The people consult wooden idols and are led astray by a 'spirit of prostitution.' Their idolatry is spiritual adultery against God.
Overview
Seeking guidance from lifeless wood exposes the folly of idolatry, in which people trust objects they themselves have made. The 'spirit of prostitution' describes an inner bent toward unfaithfulness that drives them from God. The marriage imagery of the earlier chapters resurfaces here, naming idolatry as betrayal of the covenant Lord. The verse calls God's people to see how foolish and faithless it is to seek life from anything other than Him.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 18
- Jer 2:27who tell wood, ‘You are my father;’ and a stone, ‘You have given birth to me:’ for they have turned their back to me, and not their face; but in the time of their trouble they will say, ‘Arise, and save us.’
- Hos 5:4Their deeds won’t allow them to turn to their God; for the spirit of prostitution is within them, and they don’t know Yahweh.
- Hab 2:19Woe to him who says to the wood, ‘Awake!’ or to the mute stone, ‘Arise!’ Shall this teach? Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all within it.
- Num 15:39and it shall be to you for a fringe, that you may look on it, and remember all Yahweh’s commandments, and do them; and that you not follow after your own heart and your own eyes, after which you use to play the prostitute;
- Deut 31:16Yahweh said to Moses, “Behold, you shall sleep with your fathers. This people will rise up, and play the prostitute after the strange gods of the land, where they go to be among them, and will forsake me, and break my covenant which I have made with them.
- Isa 44:18–20They don’t know, neither do they consider: for he has shut their eyes, that they can’t see; and their hearts, that they can’t understand.
- Ezek 23:1–49Yahweh’s word came again to me, saying,
- 2 Th 2:9–11even he whose coming is according to the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,
- Lev 20:5then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all who play the prostitute after him, to play the prostitute with Molech, from among their people.
- Ezek 16:1–63Again Yahweh’s word came to me, saying,
- 2 Chr 21:13but have walked in the way of the kings of Israel, and have made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to play the prostitute like Ahab’s house did, and also have slain your brothers of your father’s house, who were better than yourself,
- Ps 73:27For, behold, those who are far from you shall perish. You have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to you.
- Lev 17:7They shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat idols, after which they play the prostitute. This shall be a statute forever to them throughout their generations.’
- Jer 3:1–3“They say, ‘If a man puts away his wife, and she goes from him, and becomes another man’s, should he return to her again?’ Wouldn’t that land be greatly polluted? But you have played the prostitute with many lovers; yet return again to me,” says Yahweh.
- Jer 10:8But they are together brutish and foolish, instructed by idols! It is just wood.
- Ezek 21:21For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination. He shook the arrows back and forth. He consulted the teraphim. He looked in the liver.
- Hos 9:1Don’t rejoice, Israel, to jubilation like the nations; for you were unfaithful to your God. You love the wages of a prostitute at every grain threshing floor.
- Mic 2:11If a man walking in a spirit of falsehood lies: “I will prophesy to you of wine and of strong drink”; he would be the prophet of this people.
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Christ at the center
God's relentless love for an unfaithful bride dramatizes the gospel: 'Out of Egypt I called my son' is fulfilled in Jesus, who redeems an adulterous people at his own cost.
How Hosea 4:12 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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