Hosea 8 Footnotes

8:13; 11:5 Hosea twice declared that Israel would return to Egypt (v. 13; 9:3) but also that Israel would not return to Egypt (11:5). Several solutions to this seeming contradiction have been suggested. Many see the return to Egypt as figurative for the place of captivity. Yet 9:3 implies that Israel would go both to Egypt and Assyria, while 11:11 says that in the future they will also return to the land from both localities. Also, 9:6 refers to a role for Egypt in the coming judgment. Possibly Egypt stood for the general fact of renewed enslavement (as before the exodus), but Assyria gave the actual place of exile. Another possibility is that 11:5 may have suffered a scribal error in transmission, in which the word “not” (lo’) replaced a similar sounding word meaning “them” that should be attached to the previous verse. A third solution takes the word “not,” which begins the sentence, as an independent clause, in the sense “No! He [Israel] will return . . .” The Lord was then drawing back from the compassionate actions of the past described in 11:1-4.

In any case, it is likely that some Israelites did flee to Egypt to escape the Assyrian oppressors, especially since there were frequent political contacts between Israel and Egypt. In relation to the large contingency of Israelites exiled to Assyria, however, the number that went to Egypt must have been small since Scripture does not mention them explicitly (Dt 28:68).