CRITICAL NOTES.—
Hosea 6:4.] Begins a bitter complaint. What] Both in mercy and judgment (Isaiah 5:4). God was constant and kind, Isa. inconstant. Goodness] Godliness, Heb. mercy, kindness, all virtues towards God and man; love which fulfils the law (Romans 13:10). Morning cloud] Evanescent and uncertain. Dew] Generated by the cold of the night, it appears with the dawn; yet appears only to disappear. The Jewish people a type of many amending and relapsing. God’s mercy is first set forth, and then men are upbraided for neglecting it, committing those sins which will be their ruin. Israel’s piety was “quickly assumed and quickly disused.”
Hosea 6:5. Hewed] Cut off, cut down like a tree (Isaiah 10:15); or to hew out a stone into the right shape. Israel was obdurate, and was hewed by the prophet, and hammered with the word (Jeremiah 23:29). Slain] The word has power to kill and to make alive (Isaiah 11:4; Isaiah 49:2). “The stone which will not take the form which should have been imparted to it, is destroyed by the strokes which should have moulded it” [Pusey]. Thy judgments] Lit. that thy judgments might be as the light. Penal justice is conspicuous, clear as the sun; every one should take heed (Zephaniah 3:5); lightening (Hender. trans.; cf. marg. Job 37:3; Job 37:15).
HOMILETICS
JUSTICE OR MERCY?—Hosea 6:4-5
These words express intense love, parental discipline, and reluctance to punish any more. God hesitates, seems perplexed, and condescends to ask the sinner himself, to specify a mode of treatment which will answer the purpose. “What shall I do?” When justice was about to punish it was prevented by repentance. When mercy was about to bless it was hindered by fickleness and relapse. God’s kindness was constant, but their goodness was evanescent as the dew. “What could have been done more to my vineyard that I have not done in it?” Nothing more to bring Israel to himself could he have done, therefore nothing remains but to adopt the treatment mentioned. God knows best what will answer the end in view.
I. Justice and Mercy had failed. Warnings had been given and judgments had fallen heavily upon the nation, but that did not answer. Mercy had shone forth in all its splendour, like the noon-day sun, but that prevailed not. Gentle means did not win them. The greater his favours, the more they forgot him and sacrificed to other gods. Then vengeance came, and they were torn by the enemy and carried into captivity. This is a picture of many whom God has blessed with mercy upon mercy. Long health, continued prosperity, and all the world calls good, have been poured out upon them. Their cup has run over. But they have forsaken God and abused his mercies. Now he is changing his ways with them. Health has decayed, business has failed, children have been taken in youth and hope, and all is black and threatening. “His wrath lieth hard upon me, I cannot look up.” But do not envy, and misconstrue this chastisement. There is goodness and loving-kindness in this treatment. It is designed to draw you to God and wean you from sin. “It lightens the stroke,” said an afflicted Christian, “to draw near to him who handles the rod.”
II. Mercy was withheld. Their goodness was like the morning cloud and early dew; which promised only to disappoint. Mercy was withheld, from their false and hypocritical conduct.
1. They were vain in their pretences. Professing to worship God and offer sacrifices, when their hearts were far from him. Their religion was outward show and formality, empty sound and waterless as a cloud. Like the morning cloud, full of colour, yet driven away by the heat of day. Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, in origin, principle, and aim, you “shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
2. They were fickle in their principles. Sound principles are a necessity in life. Without principles a man is like a cloud driven by every gust of wind; like a ship without rudder or compass, drifted hither and thither by every tide. There can be no rule, order, or government without true principle. “Moral principles,” says Hume, “are social and universal. They form, in a manner, the part of humankind against vice and disorder, its common enemy.” But the goodness of some is like the “early dew,” sparkling as diamonds for a while, but not to last. Reverence and religion disappear in extremes; we have the form, but not the power of godliness.
3. They were unstable in their conduct. Repenting and relapsing; smitten and returning; resolving and forgetting; ever beginning and never finishing. There was a fair show of leaves, but not any fruit. Most men are good for a time. In visitation from God, at the prayer-meeting or in the class, they are under deep impressions; but these wear away, and the last condition of these men is worse than the first. There must be no sham, but reality. Principle must be powerful and supreme. Goodness must endure under the burning heat of the sun. It is the incorruptible seed which liveth and abideth for ever.
III. Justice is the only alternative. “Therefore have I hewed them,” &c. Kings and rulers, prophets and priests, past misery and present mercy, seemed not to influence them. What more shall I do? Iniquities had not exhausted, but only limited God’s love. “How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens,” &c. There remains nothing but further chastisement in their desperate condition, a just retribution in kind. “Therefore they shall be as the morning cloud, and as the early dew that passeth away” (ch. Hosea 13:3).
1. The word which might have saved shall punish them. (a) God would “hew” them by the prophets. God’s work is identified with that of his servants. The word is the instrument for the accomplishment of his will. The word disturbs in sin and produces conviction; it reproves and corrects, and “like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces,” (b) God “slays” them by the words of his mouth. Denunciations of wrath had disquieted them and broken their spirits. The word had been “quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword,” to slay their hopes and joys. Men will either be better or worse, quickened or slain, under the preaching of the gospel. “To the one we are a savour of death unto death, and to the other the savour of life unto life.”
2. The judgments which they unheeded shall consume them. “And thy judgments are as the light that goeth forth.” They might have been delightful as the morning, but they shall be terrible as lightning. (a) Clear and visible; palpable to the senses, and a warning to those who see them. They will break out like day-light upon all men. (b) Just and equitable. What they deserved, and what they should not murmur at. They despised the mercy, and now they must behold the severity of God. (c) Terrible and severe; sudden and overpowering as lightning. Christ comes the first time to save, the second to judge and destroy. Duty is clear. The sinner is without excuse. God at last will be a consuming fire.
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
Hosea 6:4. Morning cloud. Evanescent goodness, generated by the chill of affliction, full of promise, but vanishes away. Many in childhood affectionate and beautiful, do not always realize what they promise. Men in sickness and bereavement vow what they do not perform. The evening does not accord with “the morning of life.” Dawn does not ripen into day.
Hosea 6:5. “Hewed them.” Moral statuary. What sculpture is to a block of marble education is to the mind and religion to the character and life. The word presents us with—I. An insight into human nature. Rough and deformed. Hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. II. An expression of God’s design. God, the Great Sculptor, seeks to correct, cut into shape and symmetry. To bring “an angel out of the stone,” make “corner stones, polished after the similitude of a palace,” to prepare “lively stones” for his great spiritual temple (1 Peter 2:5; Ephesians 2:21). III. A description of the word. A hammer wielded by a Divine hand, authoritative and efficient in breaking the rock, the hardest heart, to pieces. Hence (a) energetic in its nature, (b) varied in its effects, to slay men or make them alive. IV. A suggestion concerning the ministry. Ministers have not to soothe men in sin, nor fear to wound the conscience. As hewers of wood and stone-masons, they have to cut and hammer men. They meet with rough stones and obdurate hearts which must be humbled and hammered. Luther said that faithful ministers labour and sweat more in a day than husbandmen do in a month. With hard blows and sharp instruments have they to work, for men neither receive the image nor submit to the will of God.
Judgments as the light.
1. Revealing sin and exposing the works of darkness (Ephesians 5:13).
2. Warning men in duty and danger, ignorance and sin.
3. Destroying rebels, on whom they burst with sudden terror. “In this life also God’s final judgments are as a light which goeth forth, enlightening not the sinner who perishes, but others heretofore in the darkness of ignorance, on whom they burst with a sudden blaze of light, and who reverence them, owning that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether” [Pusey].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 6
Hosea 6:4. Transitoriness. When Daguerre was working at his sun-pictures, his great difficulty was to fix them. The light came and imprinted the image; but when the tablet was drawn from the camera, the image had vanished. Our lamentation is like his, our want the same, a fixing solution that shall arrest and detain the fugitive impressions. He discovered the chemical power which turned the evanescent into the durable. There is a Divine agency at hand that can fix the truth upon the heart of man,—God’s Holy Spirit [J. Stoughton].
Hosea 6:5. I presume the Lord sees I require more hammering and hewing than almost any other stone that was ever selected for his spiritual building, and that is the secret reason of his dealings with me. Let me be broken into a thousand pieces, if I may but be made up again, and formed by his hand for purposes of mercy [R. Hall].