Mercy as the lens for interpreting the Torah

"In both of these passages, Hos 6.6, with its emphasis on mercy, is put forward as a hermeneutical lens through which the Torah is to be interpreted: the Pharisees go astray in their understanding of the Law because they fail to realize that its central aim is mercy. Alongside these passages should be placed the beatitude, ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy’(Matt 5.7), and Jesus’pronouncement that ‘the weightier matters of the Law’are ‘justice and mercy and faith’(Matt 23.23). In such passages the quality of mercy is not set in opposition to the Law; rather, Matthew’s Jesus discerns within scripture itself the hermeneutical principle –expressed epigrammatically in Hos 6.6 –that all the commandments are to be interpreted in such a way as to engender and promote the practice of mercy among God’s people. Thus, the story of Israel is carried forward through a particular construal of Torah within a community called to embody the mercy of God."
~~ Cambridge companion to the Gospel