Hosea 4:4 Yet let no man strive, nor reprove another: for your people are as they that strive with the priest. Here is given an order of court that no pains should be taken with the condemned criminal to bring him to repentance, and the reason for that order. I. THE ORDER ITSELF. "Let no man strive, nor reprove another." Let.no means be used to reduce or reclaim them; let their physicians give them up as desperate and past cure. It intimates that as long as there is any hope we ought to reprove sinners for their sins. It is a duty we owe to one another to give and take reproof. Sometimes there is need to rebuke sharply, not only to reprove but to strive, so loth are men to part with their sins. But it is a sign that persons and people are abandoned to ruin when God says, "Let them not be reproved." They are so hardened in sin, and so ripened for ruin, that it will be to little purpose either to deal with them, or to deal with God for them. It bodes ill to a people when reprovers are silenced. II. THE REASONS OF THIS ORDER. 1. They are determined to go on in sin, and no reproofs will cure them of that. "Thy people are as those that strive with the priests"; they have grown so very impudent in sin that they will fly in the face even of a priest himself if he should but give them the least check. Those sinners have their hearts wickedly hardened who quarrel with their ministers for dealing faithfully with them. 2. God also is determined to proceed in their ruin. "Therefore shalt thou fall." The ruin of those who have helped to ruin ethers will, in a special manner, be intolerable. When all are involved in guilt nothing less can be expected than that all should be involved in ruin. ( Matthew Henry.) Parallel Verses KJV: Yet let no man strive, nor reprove another: for thy people are as they that strive with the priest. |
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