Hosea 4:6

Hosea 4:6. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge The ignorance of the nature, necessity, and excellence of true religion, which prevailed among the Jews and Israelites, was one principal cause of those sins which drew down such heavy judgments upon them. Because thou hast rejected knowledge That is, wouldest not use the means of knowledge which thou hadst. “But this lack of knowledge in the people was, in a great measure, owing to the want of that constant instruction which they ought to have received from the priests. The mention of it, therefore, occasions a sudden transition from general threatenings to particular denunciations against the priesthood.” I will also reject thee The high-priest for the time being, as the representative of the whole order, seems to be here addressed; that thou shalt be no priest to me “Since the person threatened was to be rejected from being a priest, he was priest at the time when he was threatened; otherwise he had not been a subject of rejection. The person threatened therefore must have been the head, for the time being, of the true Levitical priesthood, not of the intruded priesthood of Jeroboam. This is a proof, that the metropolis, threatened with excision is Jerusalem, not Samaria, and that the ten tribes exclusively are not the subject of this part of the prophecy.” Bishop Horsley. Seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God Hast neither desired nor endeavoured to understand, or retain it in thy mind, nor to transmit the knowledge and remembrance of it to posterity. I will also forget thy children Thy offspring, or the people whose priest thou art, and of whom thou oughtest to have taken a fatherly care; I will not look upon them any longer as the seed of Abraham, and children of my covenant.