Hosea 11:1

This chapter stands sharply detached from the last. The first 7 verses are in the form of a nostalgic remembrance of God's tender care of Israel, especially in their being brought up out of Egypt and disciplined in the wilderness, but in Hosea 11:8, it is clear that Hosea "thinks of the punishment as having fallen."[1]; Hosea 11:8-11 are Messianic and have reference to the times of the kingdom of God in Christ, and the ingathering of the "true Israel" from all over the world. This prophetic announcement should have been expected from the inspired designation by the apostle Matthew of Hosea 11:1 as a prophecy pertaining to Jesus Christ himself.

As Meyers pointed out, "Hosea 11 is very closely related to Hosea 2, and cannot be understood without constant reference thereto."[2] It will be recalled that our interpretation of the return of Gomer to Hosea, not as his wife, but as having the status of a slave, is exactly the thing in view for Israel (all of it) in this chapter.

The highly emotional figure of Hosea 11:8-9, depicting the torturing agony of a father (God) who cannot bear to give up a dissolute son (Israel) is one of the highlights of Hosea. There is in it something of the agony that Almighty God Himself underwent (in a figure) when he gave his only begotten Son for the sins of the world. However, it is a gross mistake to make this passage teach that, "God simply doesn't have the heart to destroy us wicked sinners, no matter what we do, and despite any of his threats of punishment." Ah no, the blow will fall upon Ephraim; indeed Hosea views it as already accomplished in all of its terrible and bloody details. The mercy which, even in their destruction, Ephraim was to receive pertains to two things: (1) the reduction of their penalty from extermination like that of Sodom and Gomorrah to a fate that would yet leave some of their descendents alive on the earth to partake of the blessings of the New Covenant, and (2) the laying of the full penalty of the sins upon the heart of God Himself, in the person of his Son, upon the Cross of Calvary. It was there in the event of God's setting forth his Son to be the propitiation for our sins that God showed himself to be "just, and the justifier of them that believe in Christ" (Romans 3:25). It is the unconquerable love of God in Christ Jesus that dramatically comes into focus in this chapter.

Hosea 11:1

"When Israel was a child then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt."

It is a misuse of this passage to make it the basis of making the call of Israel an event that took place in Egypt, as Mauchline and others have attempted. The original call of Israel was delivered not in Egypt, but to Abraham, to whom God promised that, "In Isaac shall they seed be called." The particular call here, is not the election as God's chosen people, but their being called up out of slavery in Egypt; and when Jesus appeared upon earth with the mission to call all mankind out of the wretched slavery of sin, it was appropriate indeed to associate the antitype (Christ) with the type (Israel). "The development and guidance of Israel as the people of God all pointed to Christ."[3] Joseph took Jesus and his mother Mary into Egypt to protect them from the wrath of Herod, which, of course, necessitated also their "coming up out of Egypt"; and therefore, Matthew associated the two events thus:

"And he arose and took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt ... that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord, through the prophet, saying, "Out of Egypt did I call my son" (Matthew 2:14,15).

A tremendous weight of importance rides upon the necessary identification of the old Israel as a type of the new, Christ himself also being in reality positively identified with both, and making the old Israel, therefore, a type of the church. Harper, as might have been expected, rejected this interpretation of Hosea on the basis of his prior assumptions, admitting at the same time that this place has been understood: "As predictive of the Messiah, to interpret Israel as a type of Christ."[4] This very ancient understanding of the Scriptures should not be abandoned.

We believe that Butler was correct in seeing here another "coming up out of Egypt" in the event of the people of God under the New Covenant "coming up out of the captivity of heathendom, which Hosea had already typified by the use of the name Egypt in Hosea 8:13."[5]