What Does Hosea 4:8 Mean in the King James?
They eat up the sin of my people, and they set their heart on their iniquity.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The people’s failure becomes food for those who handle it, and the object of their desire.
THE MEANING
The people’s missing becomes nourishment for those who consume it, and their desire rises toward the people’s crookedness. The verse exposes a present arrangement where handling failure becomes a way of feeding on it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that handling people’s wrongdoing means healing it: someone can feed on the very failure they appear to address.
THE ROOT
יֹאכֵלוּ
yōʾkhēlū
GROWS FROM
אכל
אכל (ʾ-k-l) means to eat or consume.
“eat up” in this verse is yōʾkhēlū. The verb and its food-words grow from the same root: this is an image of consumption, not detached attention. The sting is that the people’s missing becomes nourishment for those whose appetite turns toward their crookedness.
ALSO GROWS
ʾōkhel: Food or that which is eaten.
אֹכֶל
This branch makes the image concrete: the people’s failure becomes their food.
maʾakhal: Food or something prepared to be eaten.
מַאֲכָל
This food-word from the same root sharpens the charge: the community’s failure is treated as sustenance.
חַטָּאת
ḥaṭṭāʾt
GROWS FROM
חטא
חטא (ḥ-ṭ-ʾ) carries the sense of missing, missing the mark.
חַטָּאת (ḥaṭṭāʾt) can name both missing and a sin offering, so “eat the sin” holds wrongdoing and ritual food together. The overlap sharpens the verse’s charge: their consumption is bound to the people’s failure, and their desire leans toward it.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāṭāʾ: To miss or do wrong.
חָטָא
This verb names the act behind the people’s missing, which becomes what the others consume.
ḥēṭʾ: A sin or error; an act of missing the mark.
חֵטְא
This noun keeps the sense of missing visible beneath the English word “sin.”
THE PATTERN
When caretakers feed on the failure of the people they serve, care becomes a system of consumption.
Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD unto the shepherds; Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the flocks?Thus saith the LORD concerning the prophets that make my people err, that bite with their teeth, and cry, Peace; and he that putteth not into their mouths, they even prepare war against him.Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.THE THREAD
Wherefore have ye not eaten the sin offering in the holy place, seeing it is most holy, and God hath given it you to bear the iniquity of the congregation, to make atonement for them before the LORD?Leviticus places eating the sin offering beside bearing the congregation’s iniquity; Hosea uses the same root אכל (ʾ-k-l, eat or consume) as it turns that image toward appetite. The shared language exposes the shift from handling the people’s failure to desiring it.
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