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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Hosea 6:5 - 6:5
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“Therefore have I hewn by the prophets, slain them by the words of my mouth: and my judgment goeth forth as light.” ‛Al-kēn, therefore, because your love vanishes again and again, God must perpetually punish. חָצַב בְ does not mean to strike in among the prophets (Hitzig, after the lxx, Syr., and others); but בְ is instrumental, as in Isa 10:15, and châtsabh signifies to hew, not merely to hew off, but to hew out or carve. The nebhı̄'ı̄m cannot be false prophets, on account of the parallel “by the words of my mouth,” but must be the true prophets. Through them God had hewed or carved the nation, or, as Jerome and Luther render it, dolavi, i.e., worked it like a piece of hard wood, in other words, had tried to improve it, and shape it into a holy nation, answering to its true calling. “Slain by the words of my mouth,” which the prophets had spoken; i.e., not merely caused death and destruction to be proclaimed to them, but suspended judgment and death over them - as, for example, by Elijah - since there dwells in the word of God the power to kill and to make alive (compare Isa 11:4; Isa 49:2). The last clause, according to the Masoretic pointing and division of the words, does not yield any appropriate meaning. מִשְׁפָּטֶיךָ could only be the judgments inflicted upon the nation; but neither the singular suffix ךָ for כֶם (Isa 10:4), nor אֹור יָצָא, with the singular verb under the כ simil. omitted before אֹור, suits this explanation. For אֹור יָצָא cannot mean “to go forth to the light;” nor can אֹור stand for לָאֹור. We must therefore regard the reading expressed by the ancient versions,
(Note: The Vulgate in some of the ancient mss has also judicium meum, instead of the judicia tua of the Sixtina. See Kennicott, Diss. gener. ed. Bruns. p. 55ff.)
viz., מִשְׁפָּטִי כָאֹור ציצֵא, “my judgment goeth forth like light,” as the original one. My penal judgment went forth like the light (the sun); i.e., the judgment inflicted upon the sinners was so obvious, so conspicuous (clear as the sun), that every one ought to have observed it and laid it to heart (cf. Zep 3:5). The Masoretic division of the words probably arose simply from an unsuitable reminiscence of Psa 37:6.