Hosea 4:3

King James Version (KJV)

Therefore shall the land mourn, and every one that dwelleth therein shall languish, with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven; yea, the fishes of the sea also shall be taken away.

Adam Clarke
Bible Commentary

Therefore shall the land mourn - Fruitful seasons shall be denied.

That dwelleth therein shall languish - Endemic and epidemic disorders shall prevail, and multitudes shall die; so that mourning shall be found in all quarters.

The beasts of the field, and with the fowls - There is a death of cattle and domestic animals, in consequence of the badness of the season.

The fishes of the sea also shall be taken away - Those immense shoals which at certain seasons frequent the coasts, which are caught in millions, and become a very useful home supply, and a branch of most profitable traffic, they shall be directed by the unseen influence of God to avoid our coasts, as has frequently been the case with herrings, mackerel, pilchards, etc.; and so this source of supply and wealth has been shut up, because of the iniquities of the land.

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Albert Barnes
Notes on the Whole Bible

Therefore shall the land mourn - Dumb inanimate nature seems to rejoice and to be in unison with our sense of joy, when bedewed and fresh through rain and radiant with light; and, again, to mourn, when smitten with drought or blight or disease, or devoured by the creatures which God employs to lay it waste for man‘s sins. Dumb nature is, as it were, in sympathy with man, cursed in Adam, smitten amid man‘s offences, its outward show responding to man‘s inward heart, wasted, parched, desolate, when man himself was marred and wasted by his sins.

With the beasts of the field - Literally, “in the beasts,” etc. God included “the fowl and the cattle and every beast of the field” in His covenant with man. So here, in this sentence of woe, He includes them in the inhabitants of the land, and orders that, since man would not serve God, the creatures made to serve him, should be withdrawn from him. “General iniquity is punished by general desolation.”

Yea, the fishes of the sea also - Inland seas or lakes are called by this same name, as the Sea of Tiberias and the Dead Sea. Yet here the prophet probably alludes to the history of man‘s creation, when God gave him dominion “over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the heaven, and over every living thing (chaiah)” Genesis 1:28, in just the inverse order, in which he here declares that they shall be taken away. There God gives dominion over all, from lowest to highest; here God denounces that He will take away all, down to those which are least affected by any changes. Yet from time to time God has, in chastisement, directed that the shoals of fishes should not come to their usual haunts. This is well known in the history of seacoasts; and conscience has acknowledged the hand of God and seen the ground of His visitation. Of the fulfillment Jerome writes: “Whose believeth not that this befell the people of Israel, let him survey Illyricum, let him survey the Thraces, Macedonia, the Pannonias, and the whole land which stretches from the Propontis and Bosphorus to the Julian Alps, and he will experience that, together with man, all the creatures also fail, which afore were nourished by the Creator for the service of man.”

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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.

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