Matthew Poole and continuators on Hosea 4:6

6 ¶ My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge : because thou hast rejected knowledge , I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me : seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God , I will also forget thy children .

The divorce was not yet issued out, the ten Tribes yet were in some sense Ammi.

Not onely in the Prophetick Stile are, because er'e long they shall most certainly be destroyed, but in the Course of the History 'tis plain in matter of Fact, many of them were cut off by Pul King of Assyria, 2 King. 15. and many were destroyed by the bloody and cruel Tyranny of Menahem, and more were ruin'd in their estates by exactions, and impositions; The Civil Wars; the Seditions, the Usurpations of some, and the deposing of others were things the Prophet Hosea lived to see, and I believe speaks of here as things that had already destroyed many.

Of God, his Law, his Menaces, his Providences and Government of the World, had they known his Holy Nature, his jealousie for his own Glory, his hatred of Sin and his power to punish it. Had they known their God, they would either have forborn to sin, or repented of what sins they had committed, and so prevented his wrath.

The Prophet now turns his words from the people to the Priests among them. The people's Ignorance was much from the Ignorance and profane humour of their Priests, and this the Prophet doth tacitly charge on the Priests, to whom he speaks as to one particular person; Thou who callest thy self, art accounted by the people, and goest under the name of a Priest.

Strange perverseness! they who should direct others, who should be Teachers, are and will be ignorant, will not know, reject knowledge; detestest to know, as the Chald. Par.

With equal dislike I will reject thee, I will destroy your Church Constitution, and with that, I'le destroy your Priesthood; and I will do this with detestation and abhorrence too.

O! Israel, and you O! Priests, you have all sinn'd together, slighted and dis-respected the Law, broken all the precepts of it, set up other Gods, other worship, other Priests than the Law directs.

I will pay thee in thy own Coin, I will forget, i. e. slight and disregard.

The people of Israel, the whole Kingdom of the ten Tribes; both those pretended Priests, and their Ghostly children with them.

Marginal references: [illegible: 1 span] c[illegible: 2 letters] off.