BIG IDEA:
RELIGIOUS RITUALS CANNOT COMPENSATE FOR LACK OF LOYAL LOVE AND TREACHEROUS ACTS OF REBELLION
INTRODUCTION:
John Schultz: Again, God’s inner conflict is expressed in the question: “What can I do with you, Ephraim? What can I do with you,Judah?” It is as if God says to His children: “You be the judge. What would you do in my place?” In view of the coming judgment, nothing is spiritually so healthy for us as to look at our lives from God’s perspective, supposing that we can do that without bias. The Adam Clarke’s Commentary observes: “Speaking after the manner of men, the justice and mercy of God seem puzzled how to act toward them. When justice was about to destroy them for their iniquity, it was prevented by their repentance and contrition; when mercy was about to pour upon them as penitents its choicest blessings, it was prevented by their fickleness and relapse! These things induce the just and merciful God to exclaim, ‘O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee?’ The only thing that could be done in such a case was that which God did.” . . .
As in the previous chapter, Judah is included in the text. It is as if God raises a warning finger at the southern kingdom to let them know that what is going to happen in the north will happen to them also if they do not repent.
Richard Patterson: Hosea continues his complaints concerning Israel’s infidelity by posing the Lord’s rhetorical question concerning His people: just what was the Lord to do with such an inconsistently faithful people as His Israel and Judah? (6:4). Indeed, their fidelity to God’s person and standards was as fleeting as the quickly disappearing morning mist or dew. As these appear briefly only to vanish with the rising sun, so God’s people have shown brief flashes of spiritual progress and then have shortly afterwards resorted to their own selfish ways. Even worse now, they attempt to blend the worship of Yahweh with respect for foreign deities.
The Lord expects no answer to His question, nor is He looking for information from His hearers. The rhetorical question is couched in human phraseology in order to make the Lord’s people understand His great concern for them. Much as a parent is so disappointed with his child’s conduct that he almost throws up his hands in despair, so a loving God warns His people that His seeming tardiness in withholding their deserved punishment is nearing an end. Through His prophets God has repeatedly warned His people of the dangers of apostasy, compromise, and infidelity. They have often enough conveyed messages of judgment (e.g., Joel 1). Hosea has previously represented Israel as a stubborn heifer (4:16). Now as an animal destined to be sacrificed is slain and cut into pieces, so the words spoken through the Lord’s prophets will surely be fulfilled. The imagery, though extreme (but cf. 5:14), is reminiscent of the psalmist’s complaint in Psalm 44:11, “You handed us over like sheep to be eaten.” Yet as Stuart points out, “These words reflect the curses of the Mosaic Covenant through catchword connections with Deut 33 and 32… . The punishment of being ‘killed’ (grh) is a covenant judgment (Amos 4:10; 9:1, 4), though the notion of killing is expressed via other vocabulary in Deut 28 and 32.” Indeed, covenant Israel stands in the line of long covenant breakers and thus God’s people should expect the penalties associated with covenant violation to be imposed upon them.
I. (:4-6) COVENANT LOYALTY LACKING
A. (:4) Frustration with Transient Loyalty
“What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?
What shall I do with you, O Judah?
For your loyalty is like a morning cloud,
And like the dew which goes away early.”
Gary Smith: God’s response to Hosea’s invitation begins with a lament of disappointment. It is not that he does not know what to do; it is that he does not really want to do what he has to do. Somewhat like frustrated parents who are at their wits end on how to raise a deviant son, God wonders what he can do to bring about a real change in his people’s hearts. The internal struggle suggests that he loves Israel and Judah dearly and does not want to punish them. But when they do not respond appropriately, what can he do? He has warned them, chastened them to wake them up, and promised hope if they repent. What more can he do?
God’s dissatisfaction with the devotion of his people is based on the fleeting nature of their covenant love for him (6:4b). Like dew, it disappears as quickly as a vapor. Commitments mean nothing; their consistency never lasts; they are positive one day and negative the next. They say they will seek God and worship him, but soon they are inquiring of Baal and depending on military power instead of on God. They do not seem to know what loyalty means.
Duane Garrett: Here, for the first time, we see clearly the attitude behind the sudden, often inexplicable shifts between harsh, unmerciful judgment and complete pardon in the Book of Hosea: it is the frustration of Yahweh that arises from his unwavering love and from their constant wavering and outright apostasy.
H. Ronald Vandermey: Israel’s chronic ailment, disloyalty, was easy to diagnose but so difficult to remedy because of her strong resistance as a patient. A dizzying cyclical pattern of loyalty – disloyalty – punishment had become ingrained in Israel’s character since the time of the judges (e.g., Judg. 4:1-24). Now, however, the malignancy of disloyalty had spread throughout the nation, causing the temporary remedies to become obsolete. Drastic action was a necessity.
As metaphors of Israel’s loyalty, the Lord chose the morning cloud and the dew, figures expressing something that has beauty but no substance. The people who have no inner substance need the life of God infused into them.
Robin Routledge: Verse 4 begins with two rhetorical questions indicating Yahweh’s frustration with Ephraim and Judah, given all he has done for them. Love here translates ḥesed, which is the proper response of the people to Yahweh, and to one another, on the basis of their covenant relationship. This, though, is as transient as morning mist or as dew that evaporates quickly in the heat of the day. This suggests that the people may have made some effort, but it was fleeting and has come to nothing.
John Goldingay: While Yahweh may then be referring to morning mist, his point is stronger if he is speaking of the morning cloud in Israel’s highlands that can look as if it promises rain but whose appearance is deceptive more often than not. Dew plays a key role in the dry summer months in bringing crops to fruition, but it soon disappears, too. Israel’s commitment has been similar to both, as its story from the beginning shows.
B. (:5) Faithfulness of God’s Judgments via the Prophets
“Therefore I have hewn them in pieces by the prophets;
I have slain them by the words of My mouth;
And the judgments on you are like the light that goes forth.”
Gary Smith: Because God’s people do not consistently maintain their covenant relationship with him, he has sent prophets like Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, Micaiah, Amos, Isaiah, Micah, and others to declare in no uncertain terms what punishments God will send (6:5). These prophets declared God’s intention to slay them for their sins if they did not love God with all their hearts.
David Allen Hubbard: Therefore (v. 5) serves to explain the judgments that have already been inflicted (the first two verbs are past tense) through God’s agents, the prophets, who have faithfully and forcefully conveyed the destructive words of Yahweh’s mouth. The link between the prophets and their Lord is so intimate that their utterances of judgment constitute the very acts of ‘hewing’ or ‘hacking’ and ‘slaying’ that Israel’s sin warranted.
James Mays: In this struggle through the prophets against Israel’s empty religiosity, the will of the covenant Lord has been set forth with the clarity of the sun whose rising dispels all darkness. Perhaps the metaphor ‘like light’ is again a response to the song and its comparison of Yahweh’s coming to help to the certainty of the dawn. Israel clamours for help but ignores the revelation through the prophets. . .
“light that goes forth” — The clause obviously plays off his going forth is sure as the dawn in verse 3. The tone is ironic: in her feeble song of penitence Israel had banked on the dependability of God s healing; ‘what is really as dependable as daybreak’, Yahweh countered, ‘is my judgment.’
Allen Guenther: The subject of the concluding clause of 6:5 is light, lightning, or illumination. It reads, Illumination went out in the form of your judgments. So the judgments throw light on Israel’s sin. God first warns of the consequences of disobedience, then he explains the reasons for the judgments. Both types of prophetic messages are common, and both hold lip mirrors whereby the nation may recognize its condition and return to the Lord.
The contrast between the prophetic word and how Israel responds to the judgments (6:6) explains Israel’s failure to understand their covenant Lord. The prophets have urged Israel toward holy living. The people respond by increasing their sacrifices. The response misses the mark.
Trent Butler: God has used his prophets, like Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, and Micah, to cut down his people like a stonecutter would cut to pieces a massive rock. The prophetic words that came directly from God’s mouth were the divine weapon of execution, killing his people.
J. Andrew Dearman: Just as light pierces the darkness, so divine judgment has come forth in Israel’s history.
Biblehub.com: and My judgments go forth like lightning.
Lightning is a symbol of suddenness and power, illustrating the swift and unavoidable nature of God’s judgments. In the ancient Near East, lightning was often associated with divine presence and action, as seen in the theophany at Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:16). This imagery conveys the idea that God’s judgments are both inevitable and righteous, striking with precision and authority. The comparison to lightning also emphasizes the clarity and visibility of God’s actions, leaving no doubt about His sovereignty and justice. This phrase connects to other scriptural references where God’s judgment is depicted as swift and decisive, such as in the prophetic books and Revelation.
C. (:6) Focus on Loyalty Rather than Ritual
“For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice,
And in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”
Robin Routledge: This does not denigrate sacrifice, and the wider prophetic vision of the future includes animal sacrifices (e.g. Jer. 33:18; Ezek. 40:38–43; 46; Zech. 14:21; Mal. 1:11). However, Yahweh does not desire cultic observance which seeks to manipulate rather than respond properly to him, and ḥesed and the knowledge of God emphasize the importance of relationship with him. Sacrifices offered with the right inner attitude remain important, and will do so until Christ’s death makes them unnecessary (Routledge 2009).
James Mays: The knowledge of God is the unqualified response to Yahweh as he was revealed in the Exodus and wilderness and the obedience which hears and obeys his instruction. It is, therefore, a knowing which becomes a state of being. Yahweh wants community with Israel through loyalty and love instead of sacrificial meals. He desires the service of faith and obedience, not the adulation of burning altars. In his election of Israel Yahweh had not meant to found one more religion of ritual by which men might manage the divine; he had intended to become absolute Lord of all life. In the eighth century, sacrifice was the essential religious act; Hosea’s hearers probably could not conceive of religion apart from sacrifice. The declaration rejecting sacrifice must have sounded radical and nihilistic. But Hosea does not think of the principle as revolutionary. In I Sam. 15.22 a pronouncement quite similar in form and vocabulary is attributed to Samuel; this prophetic radicalism against the cult also appears in Amos 5.21 ff.; Isa. 1.12–17; Micah 6.6–8; Pss. 51.16f.; 40.6. It is characteristic of the form of these declarations that they oppose normative terms understood as covenantal values to acts of sacrifice.
Duane Garrett: This is one of the great texts of the prophets—Jesus used it to expose the hypocrisy of his opponents (Matt 9:13; 12:7). Here, again, the two great desiderata of Hosea, love and the knowledge of God, reappear. We should not fail to notice that the polemics against prostitution, violence, and corruption, although not unimportant, are secondary. Hosea is not a religious reactionary who simply desires to stamp out social sins and impose religious duty on people. To the contrary, he desires that his reader acquire the loving and compassionate heart that comes from a transformational life with God. In Hosea’s context the shrines and rituals of Israel had become impediments to true spirituality, and Hosea called upon the people to denounce them. This does not mean that Hosea regarded sacrifice or ritual worship as intrinsically bad, and it should not prompt us to suppose that the path to spirituality is to overthrow all liturgy and formal worship. In modern language one might appropriately rephrase this verse as, “I desire devotion and not hymn-singing, service and not sermons,” without thereby concluding that hymns and sermons were evil.
J. Andrew Dearman: It is the lack of love and knowledge of God among the people that is tragic, not the presence of burnt offerings and other sacrifices. Hosea offers here a critique of sacrificial ritual when it is not rooted in a covenantal ethos and where it is seen as a means of inducing a deity to act. In this way of speaking, Hosea joins other prophets and voices that see sacrifice and the public cultus as divinely given gifts to be used with gratitude, not as ritual coercion.
M. Daniel Carroll R.: To believe in and follow Yahweh is to submit to his sovereign will in all of life. Fully acceptable worship values this comprehensive view of God and recognizes that rituals separated from complete obedience are intolerable. If worship does not generate virtuous living and just societal structures, it makes a mockery of Yahweh and is nothing but self-serving piety (also see Isa 1:10 – 2:5; Jer 7:1–11; Am 5:4–27; Mic 6:1–8).
II. (:7-11) CATALOG OF NATIONWIDE TREACHERY
J. L. Mays: 6:7-10 is a sort of miniature guidebook to the geography of sin in Israel; going from one place to another it catalogues the famous crimes of various localities as an indictment of the whole nation.
David Allen Hubbard: Do they describe three separate crimes, one at each site mentioned (so Wolff, pp. 121–122), or a series of episodes in one connected event that touched all three places (so Andersen, pp. 435–436)?
H. D. Beeby: Everywhere—Adam, Gilead, Shechem, etc., etc.—the story was the same: transgression, faithlessness, evil, bloodshed, robbery, murder, villainy. And who were largely to blame? The priests who themselves were another gracious gift and who were supposed to be the preservers of the Covenant. God gives; Israel either throws his gift away or turns it into a weapon to be used against God, just as they had done with the gift of sacrifice!
Hosea’s hearers would have understood the geographical references. Almost certainly the prophet is reminding them of contemporary events which were of sufficient magnitude or near enough in time to make further elaboration unnecessary. . .
We must read these place names, therefore, without too much regard to their history and even their geography. They are representative of the whole land and of the whole people of Israel. They have become symbols that speak of universal disobedience. In these places and everywhere else, says the prophet, Israel’s response to God’s desire for love and knowledge (Hos. 6:6) has been to do exactly the opposite. It was left to a later Christian writer to coin the phrase “total depravity”; these and other verses demonstrate that its content was known only too well to Hosea.
A. (:7-9) Tracking Transgressions in Key Cities
- (:7) City of Adam
“But like Adam they have transgressed the covenant;
There they have dealt treacherously against Me.”
H. Ronald Vandermey: The context of verses 8-9, where towns are mentioned, strongly suggests that Adam is the name of a town. Identified in Scripture as the site where the waters of the Jordan divided (Josh. 3:16), Adam had fallen like the rest of Israel in transgressing the covenant.
Robin Routledge: If, as seems likely, the place is the focus, there may have been a contemporary incident at Adam that we are unaware of. One suggestion is that Adam was linked with the rebellion of Pekah, which had the support of men from Gilead (v. 7; cf. 2 Kgs 15:25). On this view, insurrection spread from Adam to Shechem (v. 9), and eventually to Samaria, where it resulted in the assassination of Pekahiah (Macintosh 1997: 238; Dearman 2010: 197–198; see also J. Day 1986a: 6).
Sin is described in various ways. Breaking the covenant (v. 7) is paralleled with being unfaithful (bāgad). The term means ‘to act treacherously’. It is also associated with marital unfaithfulness (5:7; cf. Jer. 3:20; 9:2), and so links to the reference to prostitution in verse 10 and may reflect the corruption within the priesthood.
James Mays: Apparently the incident at Adam involved some breach of a specific requirement of the covenant. The second measure interprets the crucial importance of the incident; any breach of covenant is a betrayal of Yahweh, violates the integrity of the personal relation between God and people.
- (:8) City of Gilead
“Gilead is a city of wrongdoers,
Tracked with bloody footprints.”
H. Ronald Vandermey: Gilead is singled out in the next verse as a city where murder reigned and covenant obligations were ignored.
Allen Guenther: The priests located at Gilead have refined the art of cursing one’s enemies, bringing hexes on people, and practicing sorcery for pay (here counted as robbery). They commit murder by casting spells on fellow Israelites. Thus the priests at Gilead, experts in sorcery, earned additional income by moonlighting. Their clients’ opponents in litigation or spirit included the faithful who went to worship at Shechem. This text, then, exposes the enormity of Israel’s religious perversions, the effects they have on the community, and the conflicting activities of priests within the cult of the Northern Kingdom.
Duane Garrett: The Hebrew of the last part of this verse is unusual. It means, as in the NIV, “stained with footprints of blood.” The choice of such a peculiar word and image must be deliberate, and the reason is in the fact that the root of the word for “footprints” is also the root of the name “Jacob.” Another curiosity of this verse is that it describes the inhabitants of Gilead as “doers of wickedness,” using the word ’āwen, the same word that is used for the wordplay for Bethel, “Beth Aven.” Bethel was the place where Jacob as he fled Esau in Canaan, met God (Gen 28:11–22). Gilead, therefore, as the place where he was caught by Laban as he returned to Canaan, and as the region where he met the angel of God while preparing to face Esau, corresponds to Bethel as the end of Jacob’s flight corresponds to its beginning. It is evident, therefore, that Hosea is working the story of Jacob into his prophecy; he will return to this story in 12:2–4. The point here appears to be that the Israelites have taken on the worst characteristics of Jacob—selfishness and cunning—without having his redeeming experiences—encounters with God. They had no knowledge or experience of God comparable to Jacob’s, who had a vision at Bethel and was renamed Israel in the region of Gilead. His descendants, instead of being transformed into Israel, into people of God, remained Jacob, a name that Hosea has transformed into the grim phrase, “stained with footprints of blood.”
Biblehub.com: Gilead, a region east of the Jordan River, was known for its balm, a healing ointment, yet here it is described as a place of wickedness. This contrast highlights the moral decay present in a place associated with healing. Historically, Gilead was part of the territory given to the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh. The reference to “evildoers” suggests rampant sin and corruption, possibly linked to idolatry and injustice, which were common issues addressed by the prophets. This phrase underscores the theme of Israel’s unfaithfulness to God, a central message in Hosea.
- (:9) City of Shechem
“And as raiders wait for a man,
So a band of priests murder on the way to Shechem;
Surely they have committed crime.”
H. Ronald Vandermey: Unlike the people of Gilead, the citizens of Shechem are not condemned, but rather a band of murdering priests is condemned, a group that had been terrorizing those trying to enter Shechem.
James Mays: Why would priests murder folk who were on the way to Shechem? It was one Israelite city against which Hosea directed no polemic. The ancient site had been a cultic centre associated with the Mosaic covenant tradition from the time of the conquest (Deut. 27; Josh. 8.3off.; 24). Perhaps after the establishment of Jeroboam’s state cult it continued to be a threatening competitor to the official shrines at Bethel and Dan, a hotbed of religious dissent against the state’s cultic programme. Did the priests of the state cult go to the length of plotting for pilgrims to Shechem to be waylaid (BK)?
J. Andrew Dearman: For all of their obscurity to modern readers, the comparisons to Israel’s folly in Hos. 6:7–9 suggest political treachery with religious motivations, violence, and murder with the collusion of priests. It is a picture of the society coming apart. And one of the intriguing factors is the reference to Adam and Gilead. These places (and perhaps also the mention of Shechem) may represent a type of sectionalism, regional tensions, or geographic specificity to the dissolution of Israel.
Duane Garrett: The most notorious incident involving Shechem, however, was the slaughter of its inhabitants by Simeon and Levi in retaliation for the rape of Dinah (Gen 34). In this verse Hosea describes the priests as a gang of thugs who lie in wait for unsuspecting victims. This is a metaphor of ambush, and it cannot be accidental that Hosea alludes to a place where Levi, father of the priesthood, was guilty of treachery and mass murder. Furthermore, the assertion that the priests “carry out a wicked plan” appropriately describes the deceit of Simeon and Levi at Shechem (Gen 34:13).
Hosea has therefore once again used a threefold pattern involving places in Israel, but this time with a peculiar twist. Each place recalls the worst characteristics of one of the patriarchs. At Adam they broke faith with God as did Adam; at Gilead the people, unlike Jacob, are entirely without grace; and at Shechem the sons of Levi renew the history of treacherous slaughter.
B. (:10-11a) Tracking Transgressions in Both the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah
- (:10) House of Israel
“In the house of Israel I have seen a horrible thing;
Ephraim’s harlotry is there, Israel has defiled itself.”
James Mays: The final item in the catalogue deals with the entire house of Israel instead of a particular place. Its inclusiveness indicates that the specific charges in the foregoing lines were but illustrations of a guilt which belonged to the whole nation.
- (:11a) House of Judah
“Also, O Judah, there is a harvest appointed for you,
Robin Routledge: Harvest (v. 11a) appears in the context of judgment in Jeremiah 51:33 and Joel 3:13. Most link this with judgment on Judah.
Allen Guenther: Lest Judah interpret the sins committed at Gilead as unique to the North, God includes the Southern Kingdom in the threat of judgment. Harvest may mean what is to be harvested, or the time of the harvest. Both may be intended. Their sins will be harvested by God on the day of judgment when the true nature of Judah’s rebellion will be unveiled. Harvest occurs when the crop is ripe. That time is in God’s hands. When he announces that the nation is ripe for judgment, it will receive its full “reward.”
James Mays: The will of Yahweh to rescue and bless his people is undiminished; he is faithful to his promise in the covenant. In spite of their sin he looks on Israel as ‘my people’, the folk whom his election has raised up to be ‘my son’ (11.1). ‘To change the fortune’ (šūb šebūt) is a figure of speech (literally, ‘turn the turning’) which means a return to an original starting point, a restitutio in integrum. It may have a background in the festival of New Year as the term for the expected change when God would take away the barrenness of the land and bring back its fertility with the seasonal rains. Generally in the OT the phrase is used in a historical rather than a natural frame of reference to speak of God’s shift from the work of anger to the blessing of grace (e.g. Lam. 2.14; Job 42.10).
H. D. Beeby: The sentence about Judah (v. 11a) provides a different kind of ending. First, it is a warning against complacency. If Judah has sown the same seed as Ephraim (and they had) then they could expect the same harvest, sooner or later, as their northern counterpart. Disaster falling on Ephraim must be seen not as something to rejoice in, but as the shadow of a further disaster—the one that will come on Judah. Second, v. 11a forms a conclusion meant for all succeeding readers and not only for contemporary Judah. Obviously in the first place it was uttered as a warning to Judah; perhaps it was written by a Judean scribe anxious to draw the moral clearly even though a touch pedantically and didactically. But whoever the author, he has made it quite clear that the words of Hosea possess unchanged value and were not uttered only for their own day. In later ages in differing contexts, although with very differing harmonies, they would sound the same tune. Thus the word to ancient Judah is still emphatically a word about our complacency and our apostasy, even about our harvest if we do not return.
M. Daniel Carroll R.: Hosea constantly has both nations in view, and this line is parallel in intent to the statement at 5:5. “Harvest” is used elsewhere as a description of a time of divine reckoning (Isa 18:5; Jer 51:33; Joel 3:13; cf. Hos 10:13).