Hosea 6:5

Therefore have I hewed them by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth: and thy judgments are as the light that goeth forth. THEREFORE HAVE I HEWED THEM BY THE PROPHETS - i:e., I announced by the prophets that they should be hewn asunder, like trees of the forest. God identifies His act with that of His prophets; the word being His instrument for executing His will (; ). BY THE WORDS OF MY MOUTH - (; ; ). AND THY JUDGMENTS - the judgments which I will inflict on thee, Ephraim and Judah ...

God shows here, by his Prophet, that he was constrained by urgent necessity to deal sharply and roughly with the people. Nothing, we know, is more pleasing to God than to treat us kindly; for there is not found a father in the world who cherishes his children as tenderly: but we, being perverse, suffer him not to follow the inclination of his nature. He is therefore constrained to put on, as it were, a new character, and to chide us severely, according to the way in which he here says, he had treated the Israelites; _I have cut them, he says, by my prophets, and killed them by the words of my mouth _ Some render the words otherwise, as though God had killed the Prophets, meaning thereby the impostors, who corrupted the pure worship of God by their errors. But this view seems not to me in any way suitable; and we know that it was a common mode of speaking among the Hebrews, to express the...

4-11 Sometimes Israel and Judah seemed disposed to repent under their sufferings, but their goodness vanished like the empty morning cloud, and the early dew, and they were as vile as ever. Therefore the Lord sent awful messages by the prophets. The word of God will be the death either of the sin or of the sinner. God desired mercy rather than sacrifice, and that knowledge of him which produces holy fear and love. This exposes the folly of those who trust in outward observances, to make up for their want of love to God and man. As Adam broke the covenant of God in paradise, so Israel had broken his national covenant, notwithstanding all the favours they received. Judah also was ripe for Divine judgments. May the Lord put his fear into our hearts, and set up his kingdom within us, and never leave us to ourselves, nor suffer us to be overcome by temptation....

Verse Hosea 6:5. _THEREFORE HAVE I HEWED_ THEM _BY THE PROPHETS_] I have sent my prophets to testify against their fickleness. They have smitten them with the most solemn and awful threatenings; they have, as it were, slain them by the words of my mouth. But to what purpose? _THY JUDGMENTS_ ARE AS _THE LIGHT_ THAT _GOETH FORTH_] Instead of ומשפטיך אור יצא _umispateycha or yetse_, "and thy judgments a light that goeth forth," the _versions_ in general have read ומשפטי כאור _umishpati keor_, "and my judgment _is_ as the light." The final כ _caph_ in the common reading has by mistake been taken from אור _aur_, and joined to משפטי _mishpati_; and thus turned it from the _singular_ to the _plural_ number, with the postfix כ _cha_. The proper reading is, most probab

THEREFORE HAVE I HEWED THEM BY THE PROPHETS - Since they despised God’s gentler warnings and measures, He used severer. “He hewed” them, He says, as men hew stones out of the quarry, and with hard blows and sharp instruments overcome the hardness of the stone which they have to work. Their piety and goodness were light and unsubstantial as a summer cloud; their stony hearts were harder than the material stone. The stone takes the shape which man would give it; God hews man in vain; he will not receive the image of God, for which and in which he was framed. God, elsewhere also, likens the force and vehemence of His word to “a hammer which breaketh the rocks in pieces” Jeremiah 23:29; “a sword which pierceth even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit”...

EXPOSITION HOSEA 6:1 These three verses have, by the division into chapters, been violently and improperly torn from the preceding chapter, to which they naturally belong. Their connection with the foregoing sentiments is indicated by the ancient versions—Chaldee and Septuagint, the LXX; for example, inserting λέγοντες, as if the reading had been לֵאסֹר: This (1) represents the Israelites exhorting one another in that good time which the prophet encourages them to expect. But (2) it may be regarded as the prophet's own exhortation to the exiles; their affliction urging them to seek the Lord, and their encouragement consisting in the knowledge of his ability and willingness to heal the wounds which his own hand had inflicted....

THEREFORE HAVE I HEWED [THEM] BY THE PROPHETS; I HAVE SLAIN THEM BY THE WORDS OF MY MOUTH,.... Sharply reproved them for their sins by the prophets, who were as lapidaries that cut stone, or us hewers of timber that cut off the knotty parts; so these by preaching the terrors of the law, which is a killing letter, and by delivering out the threatenings of the Lord, and denouncing his judgments upon them for their sins, cut them to the heart, and killed them; for their foretelling and prophesying of their being slain, ruined, and destroyed, was a slaying of them; see Jeremiah 1:10. The Targum is, "because I admonished them by the message of my prophets, and they returned not, I will bring upon them those that slay, because they have transgressed the word of my will.'' But the Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic versions, and so Aben Ezra and Joseph Kimchi, understand thes

CHAPTER 6:4-11 Divine Mourning over Ephraim and Judah _ 1. What shall I do to thee? (Hosea 6:4) _ 2. Their transgression (Hosea 6:7) Hosea 6:4. The Lord grieves and mourns over the condition of the people whom He loves. After the brief glimpse given of their great future of glory we are brought back into the days of Moses. The Lord grieves and mourns over His people whom He loves, who today are still beloved for the Father's sake Romans 9:1. But while He loved them, their love was like the morning cloud, like the dew, vanishing soon away. The morning cloud looks beautiful, gilded by the rays of the rising sun, but it quickly di

HOSEA 6:4 TO HOSEA 7:2. ISRAEL'S MORAL CONDITION HOPELESSLY CORRUPT. The shallow expressions of loyalty by the fickle people mean nothing, and cannot avert Yahweh's inevitable judgment. He looks for real loyalty, not for a hollow ritual of sacrifices (Hosea 6:4). Examples of the anarchy and crime that prevail, involving even the priests in the charge of murder and immorality, are given, demonstrating Israel's utter corruption, Judah also (Hosea 6:11_ a_, if this is not a gloss) being involved (Hosea 6:7_ a)._ Every attempt to heal the disease only reveals how deep-seated and

THEREFORE HAVE. HEWED THEM, &C.. This is why. hewed them. Hebrew idiom, by which the declaration that. thing should be done is spoken of the personal act of doing it. See note on Jeremiah 1:18. and compare Jeremiah 1:10; Jeremiah 5:14. BY THE PROPHETS: i.e. declared by the prophets. THY JUDGMENTS ARE.. regrouping of the letters of the Hebrew word agrees with the Aramaean, Septuagint, and Syriac, and reads "My judgment is". Hosea 6:5 speaks of Jehovah's acts (see Structure, above). Reference to Pentateuch (Deuteronomy 33:2).