They sacrifice on the tops of the mountains and burn offerings on the hills, under oak, poplar, and terebinth, because their shade is good. Therefore your daughters play the whore, and your brides commit adultery.
The Prophet shows here more clearly what was the fornication for which he had before condemned the people, — that they worshipped God under trees and on high places. This then is explanatory, for the Prophet defines what he before understood by the word, fornication; and this explanation was especially useful, nay, necessary.
In these verses we have, as before, I. The sins charged upon the people of Israel, for which God had a controversy with them, and they are, 1. Spiritual whoredom, or idolatry. They have in them a spirit of whoredoms, a strong inclination to that sin; the bent and bias of their hearts are that way; it is their own iniquity; they are carried out...
Commenting on Hosea 4:12-19
They sacrifice upon the tops of the mountains,.... The highest part of them, nearest to the heavens, where they built their altars to idols, and offered sacrifice unto them, as we often read in Scripture they did: and burn incense upon the hills; to their idols, which was one kind of sacrifice put for all others: under oaks, and poplars, and elms; and indeed under...