Hosea 6:8 Explained in Context

Selected verse

Verse 8. Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity, and is polluted with blood.

King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions

Quick Meaning

This verse marks Gilead as a city of iniquity tracked or polluted with blood.

Read It With

Hosea 6:7-11

Read Hosea 6:8 with 6:7-11. This verse marks Gilead as a city of iniquity tracked or polluted with blood. The complete unit establishes this movement: Israel's covenant treachery is localized in difficult place references, blood-marked Gilead, and priests compared with murderous ambushers; Judah's final harvest line remains obscure.

Why This Verse Appears Here

The unit supplies concrete social and priestly betrayal after the principle of 6:6, showing that the worship problem includes blood and institutional violence. Within that movement, this verse marks Gilead as a city of iniquity tracked or polluted with blood.

Phrase-by-Phrase Explanation

“polluted with blood”

In plain language: marked by bloody footprints or bloodguilt

marks Gilead as a city of iniquity tracked or polluted with blood. Public places can carry visible evidence of violence even when the precise event is lost.

Why it matters: The wording identifies this verse's distinct contribution to the complete unit.

How certain? strong

What Remains True

Public places can carry visible evidence of violence even when the precise event is lost.

How It Can Shape Life

Document bloodshed and protect people without stigmatizing a whole region or descendants.

Continue in Context

The full thought-unit study remains the final contextual authority for this Verse Lens.

Read Hosea 6:7-11 — Covenant Treachery Appears in Blood-Marked Places and Priestly Ambush

Sources used for this Verse Lens

How certain is this explanation? strong

These are the sources used directly for this lens. Language, grammar, disagreements, and the complete source shelf remain attached to the full thought-unit research record.

Biblical text

King James (Authorized) Version — eng-kjv2006

eBible.org and CrossWire Bible Society

USFM archive eng-kjv2006_usfm.zip; source files dated 2026-08-19; downloaded 2026-08-24; archive SHA-256 aec1b3b26c622fd3d963d2bbac963016b9513246ffbfa20da00bb100372ea007; normalized corpus SHA-256 09aef51d90488aa7b9722b3fd9a93f4b25f6bf2064c5fd798fb39673c300ddf2.

Supports: Exact reader-facing Scripture wording, paragraph markers, supplied-word markup, and complete verse coverage.

Exact location: Hosea 6:7-11, pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM corpus

Open source ↗

hebrew text and morphology

Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible: Hosea

Open Scriptures

Open Scriptures, release 2.2

Supports: Masoretic Hebrew, morphology, syntax, names, wordplay, repetitions, and the base text for translation questions.

Exact location: Open Scriptures MorphHB v.2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Hos.xml, 6:7-11

Open source ↗

translation and translator notes

NET Bible: Hosea with translators' notes

Biblical Studies Press

Biblical Studies Press, 2006

Supports: Verse-level translation, textual, grammatical, historical, rhetorical, and uncertainty notes.

Exact location: NET Bible Hosea PDF, printed pp. 1684-1685, translation and notes on 6:7-11

Open source ↗

Open the complete thought-unit research record