Hosea 6King James Version
Come, and let us return unto the Lord. After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up. For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. Jesus quotes this line twice in Matthew.
Chapter 6 opens with what sounds like genuine repentance but God quickly reads it as shallow: their goodness evaporates like morning dew. God sent prophets to cut them with words precisely because gentle offerings were never the point. He desired mercy and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. The chapter ends noting that Gilead and the priests have turned to murderous wickedness.
Israel's repentance cycles through morning-dew enthusiasm and is gone by noon; God wants the one thing they keep withholding, which is genuine knowing of who he is.
verse: "For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings." (6:6): Jesus will quote this verse twice in Matthew, which makes it one of Hosea's lines with the longest reach in the entire canon.
The chapter reflects a period when the northern shrines were running at full capacity, calendars packed with feast days and new moon offerings. From the outside, religion looked healthy. Hosea is reading the interior: loyalty like morning mist, gone before the day heats up.
The people of Israel speak the opening call to return, sounding sincere but demonstrating a pattern God has learned. God responds with God's own diagnosis of the problem. The priests of Gilead and Shechem are mentioned as violent offenders who have turned the road to the sanctuary into an ambush.
Verse 6 reorients the entire sacrificial system by locating it downstream of covenant loyalty and intimate knowledge of God. The offerings were never meant to be the substance of relationship; they were its expression. When the substance is gone, the expression becomes theater. Hosea says the prophets were sent to break through that theater with the sharpness of the word itself.
God's 'what shall I do with you?' in verse 4 is not rhetorical distance but audible exasperation and love at once. It is a parent's question, not a judge's.
1Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.
2After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.
3Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth.
4O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee? for your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away.
5Therefore 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.
6For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.
7But they like men have transgressed the covenant: there have they dealt treacherously against me.
8Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity, and is polluted with blood.
9And as troops of robbers wait for a man, so the company of priests murder in the way by consent: for they commit lewdness.
10I have seen an horrible thing in the house of Israel: there is the whoredom of Ephraim, Israel is defiled.
11Also, O Judah, he hath set an harvest for thee, when I returned the captivity of my people.