Hosea 4:11

THE MESSAGE

"Wine and whiskey leave my people in a stupor. They ask questions of a dead tree, expect answers from a sturdy walking stick. Drunk on sex, they can't find their way home. They've replaced their God with their genitals. They worship on the tops of mountains, make a picnic out of religion. Under the oaks and elms on the hills they stretch out and take it easy. Before you know it, your daughters are whores and the wives of your sons are sleeping around. But I'm not going after your whoring daughters or the adulterous wives of your sons. It's the men who pick up the whores that I'm after, the men who worship at the holy whorehouses— a stupid people, ruined by whores!

Parallel Translations

Christian Standard Bible®
Promiscuity, wine, and new winetake away one’s understanding.

Hebrew Names Version
Prostitution, wine, and new wine take away understanding.

King James Version
Whoredom and wine and new wine take away the heart.

English Standard Version
whoredom, wine, and new wine, which take away the understanding.

New American Standard Bible
Infidelity, wine, and new wine take away the understanding.

New Century Version
prostitution, to old and new wine, which take away their ability to understand.

Amplified Bible
Prostitution, wine, and new wine take away the mind and the [spiritual] understanding.

Geneva Bible (1587)
Whoredome, and wine, and newe wine take away their heart.

New American Standard Bible (1995)
Harlotry, wine and new wine take away the understanding.

Legacy Standard Bible
Harlotry, wine, and new wine take away a heart of wisdom.

Berean Standard Bible
Promiscuity, wine, and new wine take away understanding.

Contemporary English Version
and have been unfaithful to me, their Lord . My people, you are foolish because of too much pleasure and too much wine.

Complete Jewish Bible
Whoring and wine, both old and new, take away my people's wits.

Darby Translation
Fornication, and wine, and new wine take away the heart.

Easy-to-Read Version
"Sexual sins, strong drink, and new wine ruin a person's ability to think straight.

George Lamsa Translation
And they love whoredom, and wine and drunkenness take away their heart.

Good News Translation
The Lord says, "Wine, both old and new, is robbing my people of their senses!

Lexham English Bible
whoredom. Wine and new wine take away the understanding.

Literal Translation
Fornication and wine and new wine take away the heart.

American Standard Version
Whoredom and wine and new wine take away the understanding.

Bible in Basic English
Loose ways and new wine take away wisdom.

JPS Old Testament (1917)
Harlotry, wine, and new wine take away the heart.

King James Version (1611)
Whoredome, and wine, and newe wine take away the heart.

Bishop's Bible (1568)
Whordome, wine, and newe wine, take the heart away.

Brenton's Septuagint (LXX)
The heart of my people has gladly engaged in fornication and wine and strong drink.

English Revised Version
Whoredom and wine and new wine take away the understanding.

World English Bible
Prostitution, wine, and new wine take away understanding.

Wycliffe Bible (1395)
Fornycacioun, and wiyn, and drunkenesse doen awei the herte.

Update Bible Version
Prostitution and wine and new wine take away the understanding.

Webster's Bible Translation
Lewdness and wine and new wine take away the heart.

New English Translation
Old and new wine take away the understanding of my people.

New King James Version
"Harlotry, wine, and new wine enslave the heart.

New Living Translation
to worship other gods. "Wine has robbed my people of their understanding.

New Life Bible
"Their sinful ways and both old and new wine take away My people's understanding.

New Revised Standard
whoredom. Wine and new wine take away the understanding.

J.B. Rotherham Emphasized Bible
Unchastity, and wine, and new wine, take away the heart.

Douay-Rheims Bible
Fornication, and wine, and drunkenness, take away the understanding.

Revised Standard Version
Wine and new wine take away the understanding.

Young's Literal Translation
Whoredom, and wine, and new wine, take the heart,

Miles Coverdale Bible (1535)
Whordome, wyne and dronckennesse take the herte awaye.

Contextual Overview

¹¹"Wine and whiskey leave my people in a stupor. They ask questions of a dead tree, expect answers from a sturdy walking stick. Drunk on sex, they can't find their way home. They've replaced their God with their genitals. They worship on the tops of mountains, make a picnic out of religion. Under the oaks and elms on the hills they stretch out and take it easy. Before you know it, your daughters are whores and the wives of your sons are sleeping around. But I'm not going after your whoring daughters or the adulterous wives of your sons. It's the men who pick up the whores that I'm after, the men who worship at the holy whorehouses— a stupid people, ruined by whores!

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

take: Hosea 4:12, Proverbs 6:32, Proverbs 20:1, Proverbs 23:27-35, Ecclesiastes 7:7, Isaiah 5:12, Isaiah 28:7, Luke 21:34, Romans 13:11-14

Reciprocal: Genesis 38:18 - gave it her 1 Kings 11:8 - all his strange wives 1 Kings 11:9 - his heart 1 Kings 20:16 - Benhadad Proverbs 5:14 - General Proverbs 5:22 - His Proverbs 17:16 - seeing Proverbs 23:28 - increaseth Proverbs 31:3 - strength Proverbs 31:4 - General Isaiah 28:1 - drunkards Isaiah 56:12 - I will Isaiah 57:5 - Enflaming Hosea 2:8 - wine Hosea 3:1 - love flagons Hosea 6:10 - there Hosea 7:11 - without Amos 2:6 - For three

Cross-References

Genesis 3:14
God told the serpent: "Because you've done this, you're cursed, cursed beyond all cattle and wild animals, Cursed to slink on your belly and eat dirt all your life. I'm declaring war between you and the Woman, between your offspring and hers. He'll wound your head, you'll wound his heel."

Genesis 4:15
God told him, "No. Anyone who kills Cain will pay for it seven times over." God put a mark on Cain to protect him so that no one who met him would kill him.

Genesis 4:16
Cain left the presence of God and lived in No-Man's-Land, east of Eden.

Genesis 4:19
Lamech married two wives, Adah and Zillah. Adah gave birth to Jabal, the ancestor of all who live in tents and herd cattle. His brother's name was Jubal, the ancestor of all who play the lyre and flute. Zillah gave birth to Tubal-Cain, who worked at the forge making bronze and iron tools. Tubal-Cain's sister was Naamah.

Job 16:18
"O Earth, don't cover up the wrong done to me! Don't muffle my cry! There must be Someone in heaven who knows the truth about me, in highest heaven, some Attorney who can clear my name— My Champion, my Friend, while I'm weeping my eyes out before God. I appeal to the One who represents mortals before God as a neighbor stands up for a neighbor. "Only a few years are left before I set out on the road of no return."

Gill's Notes on the Bible

Whoredom and wine, and new wine, take away the heart. Uncleanness and intemperance besot men, deprive them of reason and judgment, and even of common sense, make them downright fools, and so stupid as to do the following things; or they take away the heart from following the Lord, and taking heed to him, and lead to idolatry; or they "occupy" z the heart, and fill it up, and cause it to prefer sensual lusts and pleasures to the fear and love of God: their stupidity brought on hereby is exposed in the next verse; though it seems chiefly to respect the priests, who erred in vision through wine and strong drink, and stumbled in judgment, Isaiah 28:7.

z יקח לב "occupant cor", so some in Calvin and Rivet; "occupavit cor", Schmidt.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Whoredom and wine and new wine take away the heart - (Literally, “takes away”). Wine and fleshly sin are pictured as blended in one, to deprive man of his affections and reason and understanding, and to leave him brutish and irrational. In all the relations of life toward God and man, reason and will are guided by the affections. And so, in God’s language, the “heart” stands for the “understanding” as well as the “affections,” because it directs the understanding, and the understanding, bereft of true affections, and under the rule of passion, becomes senseless. Besides the perversion of the understanding, each of these sins blunts and dulls the fineness of the intellect; much more, both combined. The stupid sottishness of the confirmed voluptuary is a whole, of which each act of sensual sin worked its part. The Pagan saw this clearly, although, without the grace of God, they did not act on what they saw to be true and right. This, the sottishness of Israel, destroying their understanding, was the ground of their next folly, that they ascribed to “their stock” the office of God. “Corruption of manners and superstition” (it has often been observed) “go hand in hand.”

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Hosea 4:11. Whoredom and wine — These debaucheries go generally together.

Take away the heart. — Darken the understanding, deprave the judgment, pervert the will, debase all the passions, &c.