Hosea 6:5

Therefore have I hewed [them] by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth,.... Sharply reproved them for their sins by the prophets, who were as lapidaries that cut stone, or us

Therefore 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.

Therefore; because I would do for you whatever might be done, because I would cure you of your obstinacy and hypocrisy, and make you upright and constant. I have hewed them; I have severely, continually, and unweariedly by the prophets reproved, warned, and threatened. Your hearts have been like knotty trees, or hardest stones: I have made my prophets like labourers, and, my words like axes or hammers to cut off the knots, and to hew off the roughness which make unfit for use; but all to no purpose, the desired effect hath not been attained. By the prophets; some that were before Hosea. Jeroboam the First was by a prophet reproved and threatened for this idolatry, in which Israel persisted, and to which Judah did too often fall; and through the space of two hundred years, from Jeroboam the First to Hosea’ s time, many other prophets were sent, whose names, and some memoirs of them, we have, as Ahijah, Jehu, Hanani, Elijah, and Elisha. These and such like were the prophets that did hew crooked and knotty Israel. I have slain them: some say the false prophets are the persons meant here, whom God did slay for their sin, seducing Israel to, and confirming them in, idolatry; indeed Elijah’ s sincere zeal did cut off so many, ,40, and Jehu’ s counterfeit zeal cut off so many, ,25, that it could never be forgotten among that people. So the thing is true, many false prophets were slain for this sin; yet the persons in our text were not these false prophets, but they were the people of Israel and Judah, the idolatrous, refractory hypocrites among them, whom God threatened with death, and that by the sword of enemies. By the words of my mouth; as he did by his word foretell, so he did effect too in due time. Thy judgments are as the light that goeth forth, i.e. the punishments threatened, the miseries foretold, which fell upon this people, did so fully answer the prediction, that every one might see them clear as the light, and as constantly executed as the morning. So .

Hosea 6:5 Therefore 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.Ver. 5. Therefore have I hewed them by my prophets] Therefore? wherefore? because there is so little stability and solidity in them; because they are so off and on, so light and false-hearted; therefore I have spared for no pains (though all to small purpose), but have sharply rebuked them that they might be sound in the faith, Revelation 2:16 yea, I have fought against them with the sword of my mouth, and slain them by powerful convictions of conscience; so that they are self-condemned, and the judgments are written as it were with a beam of the sun, they are so clear to themselves and others. This is the coherence, and the reason of the illative particle "therefore." It is the sad complaint of a late reverend writer, when we have spent all our wind on our people their hearts will be still apt to be carried away with every wind of doctrine. They are won, saith another, with an apple, and lost with a nut; no man knows where to find them in one mind for a month’ s time; such a generation of moon calves never appeared in the world before. Our giddy hearers (saith a third), after all our pains taken with them, have no mould but what the next teacher casteth them into; being blown, like glasses, into this or that shape at the pleasure of his breath. I have hewed them by the prophets] Who are here compared to masons or stone hewers, 2 Kings 12:12 1 Chronicles 22:2 Job 19:24 Isaiah 51:1; to carpenters, 1 Kings 5:15 Proverbs 9:1 Isaiah 5:2; to day labourers, who dig pits and cisterns, Deuteronomy 6:11; Deuteronomy 8:9 2 Chronicles 26:10 Nehemiah 9:25 Jeremiah 2:13. A minister’ s life is no idle man’ s occupation; they meet with many rough stones, knotty pieces, hard quarries, tough work. Some are stones crumbling all to crattle as soon as we begin to hammer them, and as timber falling to splinters when we fall to the hewing of them; and other such sons of Belial there are that a man cannot speak to them, 1 Samuel 25:17; they are "thorns that cannot be taken with hands, but the man that shall touch them must be fenced with iron and with the staff of a spear." These shall be thrust away as thorns, and utterly burnt with fire, 2 Samuel 23:6-7.

(5) The LXX. render, Therefore I have mowed down their prophets; but this would destroy the parallelism, in which “prophets” correspond to “words of my mouth.” The sense is, I have slain them by the announcement of deserved doom. Thy judgments . . .—An error has crept here into the Masoretic text from which the LXX. and other ancient versions are free. The mistake consists in misplacing an initial letter as a final one. Translate, My judgment shall go forth as the light, clear, victorious, and beneficent. (Comp. the language of Psa 37:6 and Isaiah 62:1-2.)

Verse 5. Therefore have I hewed them by the prophets] I have sent my prophets to testify against their fickleness. They have smitten them with the most solemn and awful threatenings; they have, as it were, slain them by the words of my mouth. But to what purpose? Thy judgments are as the light that goeth forth] Instead of ומשפטיך אור יצא umispateycha or yetse, "and thy judgments a light that goeth forth," the versions in general have read ומשפטי כאור umishpati keor, "and my judgment is as the light." The final כ caph in the common reading has by mistake been taken from אור aur, and joined to משפטי mishpati; and thus turned it from the singular to the plural number, with the postfix כ cha. The proper reading is, most probably, "And my judgment is as the light going forth." It shall be both evident and swift; alluding both to the velocity and splendour of light.

5. Similar fitful repentances have already forced Jehovah to interpose, like a severe but kind physician who will cut out the diseased part rather than suffer the evil to spread. hewed them by the prophets] i.e. warned them of the fatal consequences of their conduct. The divine or prophetic word has a destroying power ascribed to it (Isaiah 11:4; Isaiah 49:2; Jeremiah 1:10; Jeremiah 5:14; 1 Kings 19:17). thy judgments are as the light that goeth forth] ‘Thy judgments,’ i.e. those pronounced upon thee. According to this reading we have to supply ‘as,’ and suppose a sudden change of pronoun. The Septuagint, however, with the Peshito, and even the Targum, reads differently—my judgment shall go forth as the light (this simply involves a slightly different grouping of the letters). ‘My judgment’, viz. that upon Israel; ‘shall go forth’, for we are no longer in the imagined future (as in Hosea 6:1-3); ‘as the light’, that all may see it and tremble.

Therefore have I hewed them by the prophets - Since they despised God’s gentler warnings and measures, He used severer.

4, 5. What shall I do unto thee — What more can I do to move you to heartfelt repentance? Goodness — In Hosea 2:19, “lovingkindness” (see comment there); here the loving attitude and disposition toward Jehovah.