It is not spoken to idolaters who have abandoned worship, but to covenant members who are busy with the notion of being God’s people. The altar is active, the language orthodox, the rhythms familiar. Yet God declares that something essential is missing. What is lacking is not sacrifice, but ḥesed.

The immediate context sharpens the rebuke. In Hosea 6:1–3 the people speak words of repentance that sound hopeful and confident. They speak of return, healing, revival, even resurrection. Their language is fluent and expectant. But the Lord interrupts in verse 4, exposing the shallowness of their love: “Your ḥesed is like a morning cloud, like the early dew that goes away.” Outwardly, their repentance looks real enough to speak of, but not strong enough to endure. Hosea 6:6 is therefore God’s verdict on religious repentance that does not issue in covenant fidelity.

Jeremiah Burroughs (1599–1646), the 17th century Puritan holds great weight to this verse. It is this verse, Burroughs says, in which God reveals His heart’s desire for His people. And although this series of devotions has been limited to the use of hesed in Hosea, the density of God’s desires in the verse before us means we must try to grasp something of the whole verse. Because, as Burroughs points out, hesed in Hos 6:6 is operating as a synecdoche for comprehending all the duties required of us under the second table of the Ten Commandments. Now to grasp the significance of what Burroughs is saying here requires us to understand that the charge God is bringing against Israel in this verse is that He is grieved because His people have failed to show hesed, loving kindness mingled with mercy, to one another.

Yes, I have not made a mistake here. God is grieved when His people fail in their love, hesed, for one another. We see how God is grieved in this manner in 1 John 4:20; “If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar.” Hosea tells us that God is grieved when His people fail to show hesed to one another; John tells us why this is the case—His people are lying directly to Him when they fail to love one another.

Burroughs is very informative on this verse. The principal scope of the verse he argues is that the poor were wronged, oppressed and tyrannized by their leaders, who then would go to God with their sacrifices and seek atonement for their sins. In the modern church we have witnessed the sexual abuse scandals unfold in recent decades. But, these scandals are really the tip of the iceberg. Wherever there are leaders gaining kudos for their ministry when there are the spiritually poor and malnourished in their midst, hesed is lacking. This is Matt 23:23 played out in real time before us on a daily basis: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.” Notice what Jesus is saying here; failure to attend to the weightier matters of the law in the way you live together, brings judgment upon ourselves. Hosea 6:6 tells us why such judgment is due; it is a direct attack upon God himself and He is grieved.

Now, Hosea makes a deliberate and devastating contrast in v6. God does not say He desires more sacrifice, or better sacrifice, but ḥesed instead of sacrifice. Was the Lord saying to stop sacrificing then? Not at all, as we just saw in Matt 23:23. It has to be acknowledged though that sacrifices made under the Law were in fact a mercy of God to His people. We might say that these OT sacrifices were shadows of the ultimate act of covenantal hesed that pointed to the death of His Son for our sins. And so the issue Hosea is drawing attention to here is that their sacrifices were being offered as a substitute for love; as a substitute for loving Him, and as a substitute for loving one another. The issue is not that sacrifice is illegitimate. The issue is order and essence. Sacrifice without ḥesed is hollow. Ritual without covenant loyalty becomes an insult rather than an offering.

What we are seeing in Hosea, and particularly in 6:6 is that hesed in Hosea does not mean kindness in the abstract, nor emotional warmth, nor momentary remorse. It is covenantal loyalty rooted in the knowledge of God, as the second half of v6 indicates. It is love that binds obedience, faithfulness, mercy, and endurance together as faith in God, lived out with the same covenantal seriousness within God’s covenant community. It is only when both aspects—sacrificial love to God and to one another— becomes the lived life that hesed can be said to be present. Where ḥesed is absent in either of these relationships, religion may continue, but the covenant life is dead.

The parallel phrase, v6b, confirms this double-sided hesed relationship: “the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” Knowledge here is not informational but relational. It is the lived knowledge that comes from walking with God, submitting to His word, and ordering life according to His character. Israel had not lost or abandoned the name of Yahweh; they did not believe they had lost communion with Him. They knew how to perform religion, how to tick all the boxes, but they failed to ask if the God to whom it was addressed knew them. And so when Jesus says in Matt 7:23 “And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness” on Judgment Day, Hosea tells us why. The accusation of lawlessness Jesus makes is inseparable from the lacking of experiential knowledge of God as evidenced in the lack of hesed between His people.

Now, we quoted Burroughs above where he said hesed in Hos 6:6 was a synecdoche of the second tablet of the Law. We can say in relation to v6b, that knowledge of God is the synecdoche for the first tablet of the Law. For how can we have no other Gods than Him, without the knowledge of Him? How can we recognise those false images of God our minds are so prone to create and worship without knowledge of the true God? Without the knowledge of God, we will live our lives full of blasphemy and self-effort. Thus, hesed in Hosea 6:6 gives us the key enabling to love Him and enjoy Him all the days of our lives. And surprisingly, this is how the world comes to know that Jesus lives. When we love one another with covenantal hesed, our Lord is glorified.

This verse exposes a recurring human instinct to us: we seek to replace relational obedience with manageable religious acts. Sacrifice can be measured, scheduled, and completed. Ḥesed cannot be measured, often goes without being seen or appreciated, and asks for nothing in return. Hesed demands the whole life. It persists beyond moments of crisis. It refuses to evaporate once pressure eases. In this sense, sacrifice is attractive precisely because it can be finished, while covenant love must be maintained throughout the seasons of life and often towards the very people whom we can deem as unworthy of it..

Canonically, Hosea 6:6 does not introduce a new principle but restates an old one. Samuel spoke the same word to Saul: obedience is better than sacrifice. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, and Micah echo it. When Jesus cites Hosea 6:6 in the Gospels, He does so not to relax God’s demands but to expose hardened religiosity. His words in Matt 9:13, “‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners”, are Hosea’s words and echo the theme that occurs throughout the Old Testament. God has never been satisfied with worship that bypasses love and knowledge.

There is a theological paradox of the verse that we must learn to hold carefully. True, God desires ḥesed, yet He commands it as well. He rejects sacrifice, yet ordains sacrifice as worship. And do not fall for the trap that says we no longer need to offer sacrifices today. Paul, in Romans 12:1 shatters that idea: “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”  Paul is saying the lives we live in our bodies now are to be our sacrificial worship of God. The tension of the theological paradox here is resolved with covenantal hesed: true worship flows from covenant love; it does not replace it. Sacrifice is the fruit of ḥesed, not its substitute.

In Hosea, the absence of ḥesed leads inevitably to judgment, not because God is harsh, but because covenant life has already collapsed. Where there is no steadfast love and no knowledge of God, the land itself mourns. Moral decay follows theological collapse.

The word therefore presses upon the Church with undiminished force. Religious activity, doctrinal precision, and cultural relevance are no protection against covenant failure. Where love for God does not endure, worship becomes performance and repentance becomes cyclical self-repair. Hosea 6:6 calls the people of God back to the centre: not to abandon worship, but to recover the covenant heart from which true worship arises. Evidence of our covenant love to God is seen in how we live together, not in the doctrines we hear about.

Hosea 6:6 is not issuing a call to sentiment, but to hesed fidelity. Not to intensity, but to endurance. Not to sacrifice as currency for atonement with God, but to love God and our neighbour with hesed. God desires a people who know Him, and who therefore remain loyal to Him when sacrifice is no longer impressive and obedience is costly as we love one another. The wonder of it all, is that living as the people Hos 6:6 calls us to be, the Law of God is fulfilled by sinful people redeemed by the grace of God, as Israel was called to be, and as Christ has called all His people to be.

As we conclude this fourth study on hesed in Hosea, it is appropriate to ask what should have been the foundation of Israel’s hesed? The Old Testament prophets always remind the people, as Hosea does in 11:1, that it was Yahweh who delivered them from slavery in Egypt. Hesed, therefore, is grounded in the redemptive acts of the Lord himself. Failure to live lives characterised by hesed, is not merely a moral lapse; it is a forgetfulness of their redemption. Israel had forgotten Yahweh’s saving acts. As hard to imagine as it is, it would be like people today belonging to their local church but forgetting why they are known by Christ’s name. It was Christ who first loved them and delivered them from their bondage to sin. When God’s people forget this foundational truth, we grieve the Lord. May we all learn from Hosea what God’s definition of hesed truly is.