Attributed commentary excerpt
Barnes' Notes on Hosea 6:6
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Notes on the Whole Bible
Albert Barnes (1798–1870) · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
For I desired mercy and not sacrifice - God had said before, that they should “seek” Him “with their flocks and herds, and not find” Him. So here He anticipates their excuses with the same answer wherewith He met those of Saul, when he would compensate for disobedience by burnt-offerings. The answer is, that all which they did to win His favor, or turn aside His wrath, was of no avail, while they willfully withheld what He required of them. Their mercy and goodness were but a brief, passing, show; in vain He had tried to awaken them by His prophets; therefore judgment was coming upon them, for, to turn it aside, they had offered Him what He desired not, sacrifices without love, and had not offered Him, what He did desire, love of man out of love for God. God had Himself, after the fall, enjoined sacrifice, to foreshow and plead to Himself the meritorious Sacrifice of Christ. “He” had not contrasted “mercy” and “sacrifice,” who enjoined them both. When then they were contrasted, it was through man’s severing what God united. If we were to say, “Charity is better than Church-going,” we should be understood to mean that it is better than such Church-going as is severed from charity. For, if they were united, they would not be contrasted. The soul is of more value than the body. But it is not contrasted, unless they come in competition with one another, and their interests (although they cannot in trust “be,”) “seem” to be separated. in itself, “Sacrifice” represented all the direct duties to God, all the duties of the first table. For Sacrifice owned Him as the One God, to whom, as His creatures, we owe and offer all; as His guilty creatures, it owned that we owed to Him our lives also. “mercy” represented all duties of the second table. In saying then, “I will have mercy and not sacrifice,” he says, in effect, the same as John, “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar, for he that loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” 1 John 4:20. As the love, which a man pretended to have for God, was not real love, if a man loved not his brother, so “sacrifice” was not an offering, to God at all, while man withheld from God that offering, which God most required of him, the oblation of man’s own self. They were, rather, offerings to satisfy and bribe a man’s own conscience. Yet the Jews were profuse in making these sacrifices, which cost them little hoping thereby to secure to themselves impunity the wrongful gains, oppressions, and fulnesses which they would not part with. It is with this contrast, that God so often rejects the sacrifices of the Jews, “To what purpose is the multitude of your oblations unto Me? Bring no more vain oblations unto Me; new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; iniquity and the solemn meeting” Isaiah 1:11-13. “I spake not to your fathers, nor commanded them, in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices; but this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be My people” Jeremiah 7:22-23. And the Psalmist; “I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy burnt-offerings, to have been continually before Me. Offer unto God thanksgiving, etc. But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do, to declare My statutes, etc.” Psalms 1:1-6, Psalms 8:1-9, Psalms 14:1-7, Psalms 16:1-11. But, further, the prophet adds, “and the knowledge o…
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