Key verse: 14
I PUT THEM TO DEATH WITH MY HAND
God gives a death threat to Israel because of his idolatry. Hosea doesn't abandon his hope of Israel's restoration. He knows that it's God's hope to Israel, which doesn't wither while his people be infidel. God cans save his people from death, but provided that...
1. You will be without value (1-8)
Once, Ephraim was an object of fear among the peoples. Now he is an object of mockery without value before them, because they are idolatrous, not more valuable than their handmade works. Their existence is compared with the morning cloud, the dew which passes early away, the chaff, and the smoke coming out of the chimney, all are ephemeral. In the past God was very friendly and favorable towards his people, he was a "shepherd" in the desert (5), but nos God appears as an enemy. All of a sudden he becomes as a devouring lion, as a tearing bear. The fundamental cause of this woe is indicated at verse 6: pride. As soon as the people were in the pastures, they felt their hunger was satisfied, and when they were full, they were puffed up (VF).
2. O Death, where is your sting ? (9-15)
Verse 14 is one of the most hardly decipherable verses. But the meaning the most likely is that God is Almighty to save Israel from death. But he can't exercise his power if the people doesn't repent, that's why he says: "clemency conceales from my eyes". There is in God so much power of life that he can be for death what plague is for mankind, he can be for sepulchre what sepulchre is for our bodies: he can kill death as death kills us, he can swallow the sepulchre as the sepulchre swallow us. God prepares himself to exercise his power when Israel will be penitent. Similarly, for each person who repents. In the context of the Corinthians, Paul says that when the moral conditions of resurrection will be met, that means conversion and faith, God certainly will operate it (1 Co 15:55). Verse 14 can be translated like: "You would like I redeem you while you refuse to repent, it's not possible." What doesn't prevent that there is a hope, but after the consumed punishment...
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