What Does Hosea 9:4 Mean in the King James?
They shall not offer wine offerings to the LORD, neither shall they be pleasing unto him: their sacrifices shall be unto them as the bread of mourners; all that eat thereof shall be polluted: for their bread for their soul shall not come into the house of the LORD.
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
A meal marked by mourning leaves every eater unclean, and sacred presentation cannot carry it into the LORD’s house.
THE MEANING
Your offering cannot change what the meal carries: it is like mourners’ bread, and everyone who eats it becomes unclean. The bread meant for your living soul does not enter the LORD’s house; the verse holds bodily sustenance and sacred approach together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that giving something to God makes it acceptable simply by calling it an offering.
THE ROOT
יִטַּמָּאוּ
yiṭṭammāʾû
GROWS FROM
ט־מ־א
ṭ-m-ʾ
to be unclean or ritually impure
“polluted” in this verse is yiṭṭammāʾû. The Hebrew says that everyone who eats becomes unclean. The word keeps the eater’s ritual condition in view: this bread does not become acceptable simply because it is presented as an offering.
ALSO GROWS
ṭāmēʾ: unclean
טָמֵא
This adjective names the condition the eaters take on.
ṭumʾāh: uncleanness, impurity
טֻמְאָה
This noun gives the condition a name, making clear that the verse speaks of more than food that tastes or looks spoiled.
אוֹנִים
ʾōnîm
GROWS FROM
א־נ־ן
ʾ-n-n
to mourn, to lament
“mourners” in this verse is ʾōnîm. The bread is named through mourning before anyone eats it. That grief-marked quality belongs to the meal itself, which the verse then connects with the uncleanness of every eater.
ALSO GROWS
ʾōnî: mourning
אֹנִי
This related form names a state of mourning, giving depth to the phrase “bread of mourners.”
ʾānan: to mourn, lament
אָנַן
The verb reveals the grief carried in the description of the bread.
לְנַפְשָׁם
lenafsham
GROWS FROM
נ־פ־שׁ
n-p-sh
the living soul, the whole living person
The bread is for their living soul, not for an abstract part detached from the person. The verse joins what sustains the living person with what can enter the LORD’s house.
ALSO GROWS
nephesh ḥayyah: living soul
נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה
This phrase names a living being and shows the embodied sense carried by the word.
nephesh reʿēvāh: hungry living soul
נֶפֶשׁ רְעֵבָה
This phrase shows the living soul as one that can hunger and be satisfied.
THE PATTERN
Sacrificial form cannot supply the living relationship God desires beneath it.
To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.THE THREAD
But the soul that eateth of the flesh of the sacrifice of peace offerings, that pertain unto the LORD, having his uncleanness upon him, even that soul shall be cut off from his people.The same טמא (ṭ-m-ʾ), “unclean,” root governs Hosea’s “polluted” and Leviticus’s “uncleanness”: the eater’s condition matters even at a table set apart to the LORD. That shared root shows why the bread cannot simply be carried into worship as though the offering itself makes it clean.
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