Hosea 6:5

‘Therefore have I hewed them by the prophets,

I have slain them by the words of my mouth.'

It was because of this shallowness revealed in their attitudes that God had in the past sent His prophets (Moses, Samuel, Elisha, Elijah, Micaiah, Jonah, Amos, etc) to ‘hew them down' like trees falling before the lumberjacks. And because of that same shallowness He had slain them with the words of His mouth, both by making them shudder before Him (compare Exodus 20:18; Deuteronomy 4:10; Deuteronomy 4:33; Deuteronomy 4:36; Deuteronomy 5:4; Deuteronomy 5:22) and by His word of power bringing disasters upon them.

For it had been necessary for Him in the past, having provided His covenant with its demanding stipulations, to send His fiery prophets to seek to apply that covenant permanently to the people, but now He wanted them to know that, as their own history demonstrated, His efforts had failed. And it left Him not knowing what He could do next. Of course, as He will go on to point out, He did know, for things had reached a situation where the only solution was devastation and exile. So by bringing out the past by these words the current situation in Israel was being connected with the failures of that past.

Some, by pointing the consonants in a different way, would translate the first line as, ‘therefore have I hewed them by My fear-inspiring speech' on the basis of linguistic discoveries at Ugarit. This would possibly provide a better parallel, but the overall emphasis is the same.

‘And my judgment will go forth as the light (or ‘as the sun', the ‘greater light' of Genesis 1:15).'

Using the same consonants as the MT but repointing (the pointing is not a part of the original text) YHWH now points out that because of their failure in covenant faithfulness and covenant love He is about to send forth His judgment which will come on them in the same way as the sun (or the morning light) causes the night to disappear. Thus like their covenant love, they themselves will soon ‘go early away'. Unlike the morning mist the sun (or period of light) lasts throughout the day, an indication of the certainty of God's purposes. For the Hebrew word for ‘light' being used to denote the ‘sun' compare Judges 5:31, and see also Habakkuk 3:4.

The MT (Masoretic Text) reads, ‘your judgments are as the light (sun) which goes forth'. In that case ‘your judgments' speaks of ‘the judgments which have come upon you', and sees them as being as permanent and effective as the sun. But the original Hebrew text was simply composed of consonants with no joins between the words, and the reading suggested above is a translation of the MT consonants divided up in a slightly different way, using different vowel sounds. (The vowel signs were provided by the Masoretes some centuries after the coming of Christ and are therefore not an essential part of Scripture).