Hosea 6:8

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

Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity, and is polluted with blood. Gilead is a city - probably Ramoth-gilead, metropolis of the hilly region beyond Jordan, south of the Jabbok, known as "Gilead" (1 Kings 4:13 : cf.

Gilead; one of the six cities of refuge, situate in the country of that name, on a high hill, whence it is called Ramoth-gilead: now as a city of refuge it was a city pertaining to the priests and Levites, as all the cities of refuge did, in what tribe soever they were, . Is a city of them that work iniquity; a sacerdotal city, where priests did, and religion, i.e. knowledge of God and mercy to man, should, dwell; but Gilead is a city full of most notorious transgressors, the inhabitants, though Levites and priests, are a generation of men that work all manner of wickedness. And is polluted with blood; murders committed there have polluted it, or murderers protected there against the law of God, who provided these cities a relief for such as unawares, without malice, by chance slew his neighbour, not for wilful murderers; yet these for money or interest got in and were secured there; and probably many were kept out or delivered up to the avenger of blood contrary to the law: thus Gilead by name, and all the rest of the cities of refuge intended too, were polluted with blood.

Hosea 6:8 Gilead [is] a city of them that work iniquity, [and is] polluted with blood.Ver. 8. Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity] Another πονηροπολις; such a city there was in Greece, and so called by King Philip, for the naughtiness of the inhabitants. This Gilead was one of those ten cities of refuge beyond Jordan, given to the priests for a possession, Joshua 21:38, &c., and probably the chief city, which therefore bare the name of the whole country, as Athens was called the Greece of Greece (’Eλλας ‘Eλλαδος). The inhabitants thereof (though Levites) were the worst of men, workers of iniquity, such as did wickedly with both hands, earnestly wearying themselves in the devil’ s drudgery; and then sitting down to rest them in the chair of pestilence. There is not a worse creature upon earth, or so fit for hell, as a profane priest, a debauched minister, Matthew 5:13. Corruptio optimi pessima, as the sweetest wine makes the sourest vinegar, as the finest flesh is resolved into the vilest earth, and as the whitest ivory burnt becomes the blackest coal. Who would have looked for so much wickedness at Gilead, at Shiloh, at Anathoth, at Jerusalem, where the priests and scribes bare sway, and did dominari in suggestis? And yet that once faithful city was "become a harlot; it was full of judgment, righteousness lodged in it, but now murderers," Isaiah 1:21. In our Saviour’ s time it was prophetarum macellum, the slaughter house of the saints, as now Rome is, and once London was in bloody Bonner’ s days: whom a certain good woman once told in a letter, that he was deservedly called the common cut-throat and general slaughter slave to all the bishops of England. At his death he boasted (as Stokesley had done before him) how many heretics he had burned: seven hundred saints in four or five years’ time those bloody and deceitful men sent to heaven in fiery chariots. There are none so cruel to the lives of men as wicked clergy. Gilead was polluted with blood] Not only with the blood of souls (by their default drowned in perdition and destruction, Ezekiel 33:7; Ezekiel 3:18), but of bodies too, destroyed by their hands or means. The priests of these times may seem, by what is said of them in the next verse, to have been men of their hands, the sworn swordmen of the devil, such as was Timotheus Herulus, Bishop of Alexandria, A.D. 467. Pope Innocent, who threw Peter’ s keys into the river Tiber, and took up Paul’ s sword, as he called it, and that Philip, Bishop of Beauvieu, in France, taken in a skirmish by our Richard I, who sent his armour to the pope with these words engraved on it, Vide num filii tui tunica sit, vel non, See whether this be the coat of thy son, or of a son of Mars.

(8) Polluted . . .—More accurately, betrodden (or foot-tracked) with blood. We infer from Judges 10:17 that there was a town called Gilead east of the Jordan distinct altogether from Mizpah (identified by many with the city of refuge Ramoth-Gilead), and this is confirmed by notices in Eusebius and Cyril. Murder in a “city of refuge” adds to the horror. On the murderous propensities of the Gileadites see 2 Kings 15:25.

Verse 8. 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.

8, 9. Two spots of specially ill fame are singled out—Gilead and the road to Shechem.

Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity - If we regard “Gilead,” (as it elsewhere is,) as the country beyond Jordan, where the two tribes and a half dwelt, this will mean that the whole land was

6. Why does Jehovah use these severe means? Because he has for the people a lofty ideal of righteousness to which they are strangers and against which they rebel. His ideal is mercy — R.V.