Hosea 5:6

"They shall go with their flocks and with their herds to seek Jehovah; but they shall not find him: he hath withdrawn himself from them."

"When the God of heaven withdraws from his people and is no longer accessible to their prayers, the situation is indeed serious. It is usually assumed that he can be appealed to at all times and in all places (as in Isaiah 65:24).[15]

The condition in view here, however, is that of God's hardening of persistent and determined sinners; and for all such persons, it is already too late! Through fear and apprehension they may indeed seek to make the same old sacrifices and utter the same payers; but the time for that ultimately expires. It was, when Hosea wrote, already such a time for Israel. Ward was correct in his bold affirmation that this passage is "against the notion that all religious paths lead to God, and the idea that wholeheartedness is the chief criterion of valid worship."[16] A religion that God approves must be consciously synchronized with God's revealed will. He continued, "These people were sincere enough, and wholehearted in their religious quest. Yet God had abandoned them."[17] See under Hosea 5:11, below, for further discussion of the reason for this.

Some commentators who like to hail Hosea as "the prophet of love," are quick to hold out hope here for the doomed people; but we should not fail to recognize that no recovery of the northern Israel was prophesied, none was expected, and none ever came.

The collapse of Israel meant the end of their institutions, the actual end of their cultural world. It was the close of an era. Great numbers of Israelites would perish; property losses would be enormous; all the major cities of the land would be obliterated; and thousands would be deported.[18]

The northern Israel sank into the same oblivion that swallowed Nineveh and Tyre, Sodom and Gomorrah, Sidon and Babylon. There is a hidden boundary between God's mercy and God's wrath; and any nation that presumes to ignore this is doomed.