Hosea 6:8
Gilead is a city of evildoers, tracked with footprints of blood.
BSB
ASV
Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity; it is stained with blood.
KJV
Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity, and is polluted with blood.
Galaad a city of idolaters, supplanted by blood, and like the throats of robbers (or "the city of a robber") for both readings are possible. The Septuagint: "There Galad despised me, a city that is devoted to vanity, and disturbs the water, and your strength, O violent men."
Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity,.... The chief city in the land of Gilead, which lay beyond Jordan, inhabited by Gad and Reuben, and the half tribe of Manasseh; and so belonged to the ten tribes, whose sins are here particularly observed. It had its name from the country, or the country from that, or both from the mountain of the same name.
A city - A city full of notorious transgressors, the inhabitants though Levites and priests, work all manner of wickedness. With blood - Murders committed there.
Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity - In this place Jacob and Laban made their covenant, and set up a heap of stones, which was called Galeed, the heap of testimony; and most probably idolatry was set up here. Perhaps the very heap became the object of superstitious adoration.
Gilead . . . city--probably Ramoth-gilead, metropolis of the hilly region beyond Jordan, south of the Jabbok, known as "Gilead" (1Ki 4:13; compare Ge 31:21-25). work iniquity-- (Ho 12:11). polluted with blood--"marked with blood-traces" [MAURER].
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
The walk8
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
Hosea 5:1“Hear this, O priests! Take heed, O house of Israel! Give ear, O royal house! For this judgment is against you because you have been a snare at Mizpah, a net spread out on…
leads to
The prophet is Ephraim’s watchman, along with my God, yet the snare of the fowler lies on all his paths. Hostility is in the house of his God!
Like raiders who lie in ambush, so does a band of priests; they murder on the way to Shechem; surely they have committed atrocities.
The godly man has perished from the earth; there is no one upright among men. They all lie in wait for blood; they hunt one another with a net.
The foe pulls all of them up with a hook; he catches them in his dragnet, and gathers them in his fishing net; so he rejoices gladly.
Through
Psalms 59:2Deliver me from workers of iniquity, and save me from men of bloodshed.
leads to
O God, that You would slay the wicked— away from me, you bloodthirsty men—
Through
Hosea 12:11Is there iniquity in Gilead? They will surely come to nothing. Do they sacrifice bulls in Gilgal? Indeed, their altars will be heaps of stones in the furrows of the field.
leads to
Though you prostitute yourself, O Israel, may Judah avoid such guilt! Do not journey to Gilgal, do not go up to Beth-aven, and do not swear on oath, ‘As surely as the LORD lives!’
Though Ephraim multiplied the altars for sin, they became his altars for sinning.
All their evil appears at Gilgal, for there I hated them. I will drive them from My house for the wickedness of their deeds. I will no longer love them; all their leaders are…