Verse 9
"I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim; for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee; and I will not come in wrath.
The sentiment of this verse was fully fulfilled in the amelioration of Israel's punishment, which was reduced from the sentence of death and extermination, which they so richly deserved, even in a greater degree than Sodom and Gomorrah which had received the ultimate penalty, to a lesser sentence of invasion, captivity, dispersion, and the wholesale slaughter of vast numbers of them.
"I will not return to destroy Ephraim ..." This was rendered by Cheyne as, "I will not come to exterminate."[14] Hailey also found exactly this same meaning: "He will not completely exterminate Israel."[15] The restoration of Israel which seems to be promised in this passage has its fulfillment in the precious conditions of the New Covenant, available alike to Jew and Gentile. As Polkinghorne observed: "The penalty in view here was executed in history, but the restoration is eschatological,"[16] which is exactly right, provided that the current era of the kingdom is included in the concept of what is eschatological, "the last times" as in Acts 2:16-17.
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