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Hosea 4:5

Adam Clarke
Bible Commentary

Therefore shalt thou fall in the day - In the most open and public manner, without snare or ambush.

And the prophet also shall fall - in the night - The false prophet, when employed in taking prognostications from stars, meteors, etc.

And I will destroy thy mother - The metropolis or mother city. Jerusalem or Samaria is meant.

Albert Barnes
Notes on the Whole Bible

Therefore shalt thou fall - The two parts of the verse fill up each other. “By day and by night shall they fall, people and prophets together.” Their calamities should come upon them successively, day and night. They should stumble by day, when there is least fear of stumbling John 11:9-10; and night should not by its darkness protect them. Evil should come “at noon-day” Jeremiah 15:8 upon them, seeing it, but unable to repel it; as Isaiah speaks of it as an aggravation of trouble, “thy land strangers devour it in thy presence” Isaiah 1:7; and the false prophets, who saw their visions in the night, should themselves be overwhelmed in the darkness, blinded by moral, perishing in actual, darkness.

And I will destroy thy mother - Individuals are spoken of as the children; the whole nation, as the mother. He denounces then the destruction of all, collectively and individually. They were to be cut off, root and branch. They were to lose their collective existence as a nation; and, lest private persons should flatter themselves with hope of escape, it is said to them, as if one by one, “thou shalt fall.”

Matthew Henry
Concise Bible Commentary
Hosea reproves for immorality, as well as idolatry. There was no truth, mercy, or knowledge of God in the land: it was full of murders, 2Ki 21:16. Therefore calamities were near, which would desolate the country. Our sins, as separate persons, as a family, as a neighbourhood, as a nation, cause the Lord to have a controversy with us; let us submit and humble ourselves before Him, that he may not go on to destroy.