Hosea 6:4 - Hawker's Poor Man's Commentary

If the Reader recollects what I humbly observed in my Commentary on Hosea 4:17 and compares it with this verse, perhaps he may be led to think as I do. Certain it is, we shall think alike, if God the Holy Ghost be the teacher of both. But when I read the gracious, the tender expressions of the Lord, as in this verse, over both Ephraim and Judah, I cannot conceive that the sentence, let Ephraim alone, implies the giving up Ephraim to a judicial blindness, and irrecoverable apostacy. Reader! pause over the sweet and gracious expressions of the Lord! Was God at a loss what to do? Oh! no. But we are to accept the words as the melting and yearning compassion of the Lord over the sorrowful state of sin in his people. See Jeremiah 31:20; Hosea 11:8; Luke 19:41-42. The figure of the morning cloud, and early dew, is uncommonly striking, to point out the transient state of anything that can be called good in man. In an hot summer season, if the morning cloud appears, there is an hope of showers; but soon as the day comes on the cloud vanisheth. And the dew which promiseth to refresh, is soon dried up by the sun. Such is the specious nature of all promised goodness in man!