Hosea 6:2

Hosea 6:2 . After two days he will revive us A deliverance from miseries or calamities, from which men had despaired of a recovery, is often represented as restoring them to life after death: see Psalms 30:3; Psalms 71:20; Psalms 86:13; particularly the restoration of the Jewish nation is often described, as if it were a resurrection from the dead: see note on Ezekiel 37:11. Two, or three, in Scripture, denote a small number. Two are put for a few, 1 Kings 17:12. One and two for a few, Isaiah 7:21; Jeremiah 3:14. Two or three for a few, Isaiah 17:6. Accordingly, here the expression signifies a short space of time. Compare Luke 13:32-33. The primary and obvious sense, therefore, of this verse, taking it in reference to the others, is, that they expected God would, in a short time after they should repent and turn to him, free them from their captivity, which might be looked upon as a state of death; and would return again to them, and exhibit the signs of his presence among them, his chosen people: so that, being converted and restored, they should live in his sight, and should attain to that true knowledge of God which they had not possessed before. Added to this, Bishop Horsley thinks these days denote three distinct periods of the Jewish people. His view of the subject he explains as follows: “The first day is the captivity of the ten tribes by the Assyrians, and of the other two under the Babylonians, considered as one judgment upon the nation; beginning with the captivity of the ten, and completed in that of the two. The second day is the whole period of the present condition of the Jews, beginning with the dispersion of the nation by the Romans. The third day is the period yet to come, beginning with their restoration, to the second advent. R. Tanchum, as he is quoted by Dr. Pocock, was not far, I think, from the true meaning of the place. ‘The prophet,’ he says, ‘points out two things and these are, the first captivity, and a second. After which shall follow a third, [time,] redemption: after which shall be no depression or servitude.’ And this I take to be the sense of the prophecy, in immediate application to the Jews. Nevertheless, whoever is well acquainted with the allegorical style of prophecy, when he recollects that our Lord’s sufferings and death” were endured for our sakes, “and that he, rising on the third day, raised us to the hope of life and immortality, will easily perceive no very obscure, though but an oblique, allusion to our Lord’s resurrection on the third day; since every believer may speak of our Lord’s death and resurrection, as a common death and resurrection of all mankind.”