Lecture Seventeenth
Hosea 6:5 | |
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. | 5. Propterea secui (vel, excidi) in Prophetis meis, occidi eos in verbis oris mei, et judicia tua 1 lux quae egreditur. |
God shows here, by his Prophet, that he was constrained by urgent necessity to deal sharply and roughly with the people. Nothing, we know, is more pleasing to God than to treat us kindly; for there is not found a father in the world who cherishes his children as tenderly: but we, being perverse, suffer him not to follow the inclination of his nature. He is therefore constrained to put on, as it were, a new characters and to chide us severely, according to the way in which he here says, he had treated the Israelites;
Some render the words otherwise, as though God had killed the Prophets, meaning thereby the impostors, who corrupted the pure worship of God by their errors. But this view seems not to me in any way suitable; and we know that it was a common mode of speaking among the Hebrews, to express the same thing in two ways. So the Prophet speaks here,
But we must see for what purpose God declares here that he had commanded his Prophets to treat the people roughly. Hypocrites we indeed know, however much in various ways they mock God, are yet tender, and cannot bear any rebuke. Their sine are gross, except when they disguise themselves; but at the same time, when God begins to reprove, they expostulate and say, "What does this mean? God everywhere declares that he is kind and merciful; but he fulminates now against us: this seems not consistent with his nature." Thus then hypocrites would have God to be their batterer. He now answers, that he had been constrained, not only for a just cause, but also necessarily, to kill them, and to make his word by the Prophets like a hammer or an ax. This is the reason, he says, why my Prophets have not endeavored mildly and gently to allure the people. For God kindly and sweetly draws or invites to himself those whom he sees to be teachable; but when he sees so great a perverseness in men, that he cannot bend them by his goodness, he then begins, as we have said, to put on a new character. We now then under stand God's design: that hypocrites might not complain that they had been otherwise treated than what is consistent with God's nature, the Prophet here answers in God's name, "Ye have forced me to this severity; for there was need of a hard wedge, as they say, for a hard knot:
It then follows
1 There is no authority, as Horsley says, for "my," instead of "thy judgments," in our version; for there as no readings in the Hebrew MSS, which favors the change. The Bishop refers to Calvin, and expressly approves o his exposition of this passage. His own version is the following: --
"And the precepts given thee were as the onward-going light."