Commentary - Hosea 13:14

Bird's-eye view

Hosea 13 is a chapter steeped in judgment. God, through His prophet, recounts Israel's apostasy, their slide from being His chosen son into rank idolatry. The charges are specific: they made idols of silver, they kissed the calves, they forgot the God who saved them from Egypt. The result is a terrifying sentence. God will come against them like a lion, like a leopard, like a bear robbed of her cubs. He will tear and devour. The political structure will be shattered, the king will be useless, and the nation will be carried off. The whole chapter is a drumbeat of covenantal wrath. And then, right in the middle of this storm of righteous fury, a brilliant flash of lightning illuminates the entire landscape of redemption. Verse 14 is a staggering pivot from judgment to an ultimate, earth-shattering promise. It is a promise so profound that the apostle Paul will reach back across the centuries and grab this very verse to use as the triumphant climax of his great treatise on the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15.

The immediate context is bleak, but the ultimate context is glorious. God declares His intention to ransom and redeem His people from the very jaws of death and the grave. This is not merely a promise of political restoration from Assyrian exile, though it includes that. The language is far too absolute, too cosmic for that. This is God declaring war on Death itself. He taunts the great enemy, challenging its power, and promises its ultimate destruction. This verse, therefore, is a foundational Old Testament anchor for the doctrine of the resurrection. It shows that God's plan was never just to discipline Israel, but to defeat the final enemy that held Israel, and all of humanity, in its grip. The chapter ends with a return to the impending historical judgment, but this verse stands as the ultimate promise that God's judgment on sin would not have the last word; His grace in Christ would.

Outline

Context In Hosea

The book of Hosea is a living parable of God's relationship with unfaithful Israel. God commands the prophet to marry a prostitute, Gomer, and her subsequent adultery and Hosea's steadfast, redeeming love for her mirror Yahweh's relationship with His covenant people. Israel has played the harlot, chasing after Baals and foreign alliances. God, the faithful husband, brings a covenant lawsuit against her, promising judgment and exile. Yet, woven throughout the book are breathtaking promises of restoration. God promises to allure her back into the wilderness, to speak tenderly to her, and to betroth her to Himself forever in righteousness and justice (Hosea 2:14-20). Chapter 13 is one of the harshest expressions of the judgment side of this equation. Israel's sin has reached its zenith, and the consequences will be severe. The promise in 13:14, therefore, must be understood against this backdrop of both fierce judgment and intractable love. It is the ultimate expression of God's grace, not contradicting the judgment, but showing what lies on the other side of it for His elect. It is the promise that even after the covenant curses have done their work, God's purpose to bless and redeem will triumph.

Key Issues

The Great Reversal

There is a significant debate among commentators about how to read the first part of this verse. Are the first two clauses a promise, or are they rhetorical questions expressing God's refusal to save? "Shall I ransom them...? Shall I redeem them...?" with the implied answer being "No, I will not." Given the severity of the surrounding verses, this is a plausible grammatical option. However, it makes little sense of what follows. The taunt directed at Death and Sheol, and the clear appropriation of this verse by the Apostle Paul as a promise of resurrection, strongly indicate that we should read this as a triumphant declaration of what God will do. The God who just promised to tear Israel apart like a lion now promises to snatch them from the jaws of a far greater predator. This is a dramatic, intentional reversal. It is meant to shock us. God's judgments are terrible and real, but His ultimate purpose is life, not death. He tears down in order to build up. He kills in order to make alive. The judgment on Old Covenant Israel, culminating in the Assyrian exile, was a form of death. But God here promises that even from that death, and from the ultimate death that it represents, He has the power and the will to redeem.

Verse by Verse Commentary

14a Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from death?

As noted above, we should read this as an emphatic declaration. "I will ransom them! I will redeem them!" The two key words here are ransom and redeem. Both are commercial terms, legal terms, that speak of buying something back, of paying a price to liberate someone from bondage or debt. Sheol is the Old Testament word for the grave, the place of the dead. It is a place of darkness and silence, the holding place for all who die. Death is the power that puts them there. God is declaring that He will step into this cosmic marketplace and pay whatever price is necessary to buy His people back from the dominion of the grave. This is not just about bringing the exiles home from Assyria. This is about a fundamental victory over the forces of death. And of course, we know the price that was paid. It was not corruptible things like silver or gold, but the precious blood of Christ (1 Pet 1:18-19). The Father here promises what the Son would accomplish. He would descend into the grave Himself, into the very power of Sheol, in order to purchase our freedom from it.

14b O Death, where are your thorns? O Sheol, where is your sting?

Here the prophet, speaking for God, turns to address the enemies directly. He taunts them. This is the language of a conqueror standing over a defeated foe. The New King James says "plagues" and "destruction," but the sense is captured well by Paul's quotation of the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) in 1 Corinthians 15:55, which uses "sting" and "victory." The imagery is of a venomous creature, a scorpion or a serpent, whose power lies in its sting. God is asking, "Where is your power now? Where is the venom that you used to destroy men?" This is a prophecy of utter disarmament. In the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the sting of death was removed. The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law (1 Cor 15:56). Christ satisfied the demands of the law and paid the penalty for sin, and in so doing, he pulled the stinger right out of death. Death still exists for a time, but for the believer, it is a defeated, de-fanged enemy. It can no longer hold us. It has become, for us, the gateway into the presence of God.

14c Compassion will be hidden from My sight.

This final clause is jarring and can be read in two ways, both of which are true. In the immediate context of judgment upon Ephraim, it means that God's determination to bring the historical judgment of exile is fixed. He will not relent from that course of action. His compassion, in that sense, is hidden as the Assyrians descend. However, in the context of the glorious promise that precedes it, it takes on a different meaning. It means that God's determination to destroy Death and Sheol is also fixed and irrevocable. He will have no pity on these enemies of His people. His compassion for His elect requires a pitiless destruction of their foes. When it comes to the final war against Death, Hell, and the Grave, God's resolve is absolute. Repentance, or a change of mind, will be hidden from His eyes. He has sworn an oath and will not repent. He will see this promise of ransom and redemption through to its cataclysmic, glorious end. There will be no compassion shown to Death. It will be thrown into the lake of fire (Rev 20:14).

Application

This verse is a potent reminder that our hope is not in our own strength, our political arrangements, or our moral improvement. Our hope is in a God who raises the dead. The context of Hosea shows us a people who had utterly failed. They had broken every promise, chased every idol, and earned every curse. And it is to that people that God makes this promise. This is the heart of the gospel. God does not come to the righteous, but to sinners. He does not come to the healthy, but to the sick. He does not come to the living, but to the dead.

The application for us is twofold. First, we must see the true nature of our predicament apart from Christ. We are in bondage to Sheol, held fast by the power of Death. We are not just misguided; we are dead in our trespasses and sins. No amount of self-help or religious observance can change that. We need a ransom. We need a redeemer. Second, we must look to the triumphant victory of Christ. Because of His resurrection, the taunt of this verse is now our taunt. We can look at our own mortality, at the grave that awaits us all, and we can say with the apostle, "O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?" The fear of death is a tyrant, but Christ has broken its power. This gives us courage to live boldly for Him, knowing that the worst thing our enemies can do to us is send us to Him. And it gives us unshakable hope, knowing that the God who made this promise is the one who will keep it, and that a day is coming when all who are in Christ will be ransomed from the dust, redeemed from the grave, and death itself will be no more.