Hoseachapter 6
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Speaks with:Hosea 5×2Job 5×1Deuteronomy 32×11 Samuel 2×12 Kings 20×11 Corinthians 15×1
Summary
Chapter summary
The people's repentance song opens the chapter ('he hath torn, and he will heal us… after two days will he revive us: on the third day he will raise us up') and the church has never read those words apart from Christ's rising. But God tests the song: 'O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? … your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the dew that goeth early away.' He has hewn them by the prophets. Then the line Jesus quotes twice in Matthew: 'I desire goodness, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt-offerings' (6:6).
Context
Prophecy · Hosea — Hosea overview
- A. 1–3 Come, let us return; he will bind us up
- B. 4–6 Your goodness is a morning cloud — I desire mercy
- C. 7–11 Priests who murder on the road to Shechem
The outline
A.Come, let us return; he will bind us upvv. 1 to 3
Read vv. 1 to 3 →B.Your goodness is a morning cloud — I desire mercyvv. 4 to 6
Read vv. 4 to 6 →C.Priests who murder on the road to Shechemvv. 7 to 11
Read vv. 7 to 11 →
The world behind this chapter
Hosea 6The history
The chapter opens with what sounds like a hymn, and probably was one — the sort of liturgy sung at a shrine after a defeat. The answer that follows treats it as words without weight, which tells us the ceremony was familiar enough to be predictable.
The two images God uses against it are both about things that do not last. The morning cloud burns off within an hour of sunrise. The dew in that climate is heavy at dawn and gone by mid-morning — it genuinely waters the ground, and it genuinely disappears.
The rains named at the end run the farming year. The early rain in October and November softened ground baked hard by summer so it could be ploughed; the latter rain in March and April filled out the grain before harvest. Both were reliable, both were expected, and that reliability is the comparison being made.
Two crimes are named as evidence. Gilead, east of the Jordan, is called a city of evildoers tracked with blood, and priests are accused of committing murder on the road to Shechem — a pilgrim route, which means bands of priests were robbing and killing worshippers on their way to worship. Shechem was also one of the cities of refuge, which makes the charge worse.
What it meant to them
The line the first hearers could not have missed is the one Jesus would later quote twice: I desire mercy and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. It does not abolish the altar. It says the altar was never the point.
For a nation that had made repentance into a service with a running order, being told their loyalty had the shelf life of morning dew was an accusation aimed straight at their best moments, not their worst.
Sources cited
- Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: The Minor Prophets
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Hosea 6. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.