Hosea 11:1

The Lord reminded His people that when Israel was in its early days as a nation, like a youth, He loved the nation (cf. Exodus 4:22-23). As often, loving refers to choosing (cf. Genesis 12:2-3). God chose Israel for special blessing among the world’s nations and in this sense loved him. He called and led His "son" Israel out of bondage in Egypt (cf. Deuteronomy 14:1; Deuteronomy 32:6; Isaiah 1:2-20; Jeremiah 3:19; Jeremiah 3:22; Jeremiah 4:22; Jeremiah 31:9; Jeremiah 31:20).

"We need not find the slightest difficulty in Israel’s being called Jehovah’s son and not His wife. In a book of so many brief and normally unconnected oracles, with their wealth of metaphors and pictorial imagery, it is worse than pedantic to see a contradiction." [Note: Ellison, p. 143.]

Matthew wrote that Jesus Christ fulfilled this verse (Matthew 2:15). Jesus did so in that as the Son of God in another sense God the Father called and led Him out of Egypt when He was a child. Matthew did not mean that Hosea had Jesus Christ in mind or predicted His exodus from Egypt when he wrote but that Jesus’ experience corresponded to what Hosea had written about Israel. He saw the experience of Jesus as analogous to that of Israel. Jesus’ experience completed the full meaning of Hosea’s statement and in this sense fulfilled it. [Note: See Dyer, pp. 733-34, for several comparisons and contrasts between the history of Israel and the history of Jesus Christ.]

"This is a reference not only to the exodus of Israel from Egypt but also to the fact that all of God’s dealings with Israel were based upon the love that He would show in calling His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, back from the comparative safety of Egypt in order that He might suffer and die to accomplish His great redemptive work." [Note: The New Scofield . . ., p. 925.]