Hosea 13 Study Notes
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13:2 This verse echoes God’s judgment in 12:11 to bring the people “to nothing.”
13:3 The people have become nothing because of their idolatry, since idols are “nothings.” See 12:11.
13:4-6 The beginning of v. 4 repeats the beginning of 12:9. Verse 6 in its reference to their being satisfied is an allusion to Dt 8:12.
13:7-9 Those who are lulled into believing God is indulgent of our sins are shocked into reality by this picture of God being like a lion (cp. 11:10), a leopard, or a bear, tearing, ripping, and devouring. Israel had no help but God, and God himself had come to destroy. Thus was the fate of a people who continually turned their backs on God.
13:10-13 Verses 10-11 allude to 1Sm 8:4-5 where Israel demands a king “as all the other nations have.” Verse 12 means that Ephraim’s guilt must be contained and taken away. See Zch 5:5-11. Duane Garrett explains v. 13 as comparing Ephraim to a woman in labor whose child is breech, so that both woman and child will probably die. “In Hosea’s metaphor both the institutions of Israel (the mother) and her child (the people) are doomed.”
13:14 As in 6:1-2, although Israel was doomed, the Lord is able to bring life out of death. As Paul declared in 1Co 15:55, God’s power makes personal, bodily resurrection possible, as well as national renewal.