conjectural reading W(MY KKMRYW instead of W(MKKMRYB.  Comp. ver. 9.  The remaining YKH must be deleted.  The ordinary view of ver. 4 is hardly worth refuting.  The )L YWKH, it is said, is spoken from the people’s point of view.  The people repel the prophet’s reproach and rebuke, because (such is the interpretation of ver. 4b) they themselves have no scruples in striving EVEN with the priest.  “Even,” for want of subjection to the priests is held to be specially wicked.  But the prophet Hosea would hardly have considered it a capital offence if the people had withheld from the priests the respect of which, according to his own language, they were so utterly unworthy.  Moreover, every exegesis which finds in ver. 4 a reproach brought against the people, leaves in obscurity the point at which the transition is made from reproach of the people to reproach of the priests. ***********************************************

In the northern kingdom, according to this, the spiritual ascendancy of the priests over the people seems hardly to have been less than that of the prophets, and if in the history we hear less about it, 1 the explanation is to be sought in the

******************************************** 1.  According to 2Kings xvii. 27, 28, the foreign colonies introduced by the Assyrians into Samaria after it had been depopulated, were at first devoured by lions because they were ignorant of the right way of honouring the deity of the land.  Esarhaddon therefore sent one of the exiled Samaritan priests, who fixed his abode at Bethel, the ancient chief sanctuary, and instructed (MWRH) the settlers in the religion of the god of the country.  This presupposes a definite priesthood, which maintained itself even in exile for a considerable time. *******************************************

fact that they laboured quietly and regularly in limited circles, taking no part in politics, and fully submissive to the established order, and that for this reason they attracted less notice and were less talked about than the prophets who, like Elijah and Elisha, stirred up Israel by their extraordinary and oppositional action.

IV.II.4.  In Judah the nucleus of the development was the same as in Israel.  The idea that in Judah the genuine Mosaic priesthood had by the grace of God been maintained, while in Israel, on the other hand, a schismatic priesthood had intruded itself by the favour of the king and man’s device, is that of the later Judaeans who had the last word, and were therefore of course in the right.  The B’ne Zadok of Jerusalem as contrasted with the B’ne Eli whom they superseded were originally illegitimate (if one may venture to apply a conception which at that time was quite unknown), and did not inherit their right from the fathers, but had it from David and Solomon.  They always remained in this dependent condition, they at all times walked, as 1Samuel ii. 35 has it, “before Jehovah’s anointed,” as his servants and officers.