Hosea 6:6

‘For I desire covenant love, and not sacrifice,

And the knowledge of God more than burnt-offerings.’

The reason for God’s judgment on Israel and Judah is now explained. It will be because their religion has been both false and formal. It was true that they were continually offering sacrifices and burnt offerings, even doing it in the name of YHWH, but they were doing it on the basis that they were, as it were, engaged in a kind of bargain. Their idea was that they played their part in offering their gifts and the gods were then expected to play theirs by sending the rain and causing the earth to be fruitful, regardless of how the ‘worshippers’ behaved. Each scratched the back of the other. But YHWH is pointing out that He is not just ‘one of the gods’. He is not so limited. He is the living God Who requires covenant love, resulting in obedience to His moral and religious requirements (both of which were being ignored), rather than sacrifices used simply as a formal bargaining counter. Sacrifices were, of course acceptable to Him when presented in the right way and from the right motive, for He Himself had ordained them. But they were not acceptable if they were not offered by those whose hearts were full of love and obedience, for that was indeed the whole point of them, as Samuel had previously made clear (1 Samuel 15:22).

Furthermore He required that they come to a true knowledge and awareness of Himself, without which burnt offerings were pointless. Dedicatory offerings were meaningless unless they were presented to One Whom they knew in their own spiritual experience, and to Whom they rendered obedience on the basis of that knowledge. For if they truly knew God they would not allow social injustice (see Hosea 4:2), nor would they engage in false sacrifices in cultic centres and at shrines on the mountains (Hosea 4:13; Hosea 8:11). This was the same point that Isaiah, the Judean prophet, would soon equally stress in Isaiah 1:11-18. (Compare also Amos 5:21-24; Micah 6:6-8; Psalms 51:16-17). It was the final explanation as to why there could be nothing but judgment in the short term.