Hosea 13:14

I will ransom them from the power of the grave,.... That is, "when" or "at which time" before spoken of, and here understood, as the above interpreter rightly connects the words, "I will" do this and

I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction: repentance shall be hid from mine eyes.

Some interpreters render this text not in the future absolute, but in the subjunctive and conditionally, I would have ransomed, I would have redeemed, &c., if Israel had been wise; so it will well cohere with the 13th and 15th verses. And if the words be considered as spoken of the whole body of Israel, they will be most intelligible, as they include a condition and are subjunctive. But the apostle doth, and most Christian interpreters with the apostle, interpret them as an absolute promise made for the comfort of the pious and elect among these Israelites, and labour not to connect them with the foregoing or following words, but suppose them to be in a parenthesis between them. And so we take them. I, Jehovah or Messiah, the Father promiseth the Messiah. Will ransom, by power and purchase, by the price of the blood of the Lamb of God, and by the power of his Godhead. Them that repent and believe, and wait for redemption through Christ the Messiah. From the power of the grave; he conquered the grave, and rose out of it as our Captain and Head, and he will at the great day of the resurrection, by his almighty power, open those prison doors, and bring them out in glory, immortality, and incorruption, whom he redeemed by an inestimable and invaluable price. I will redeem them from death; from the curse of the first death, henceforth they that die in the Lord shall be blessed; and from the second death, which shall have no power over them; I will take away the sting of death, which is sin, i.e. in the dominion and guilt of it: now Christ redeems from the one by sanctifying grace, and from the other by justifying grace. O death, I will be thy plagues; thus I will destroy death, and defeat him that had the power of death: it is a metaphor, as the next. O grave, I will be thy destruction; I will recover the prey out of the mouth of the grave, I will pull down those prison walls, and bring out all that are confined there, of which the bad I will remove into other kind of prisons, the good I will restore to glorious liberty. The wicked shall have a worse prison, the godly shall for ever be freed from prison and so I will raze this prison, the grave, to the very foundation. Repentance shall be hid from mine eyes: this grace toward the godly, toward believers among Israel and in the church, through all ages, is unchangeable; I will never, as man that repenteth, change my word and purpose, saith the Lord. In either sense they speak the grace of God toward us; he is ready to pardon and save all that will repent, and he will most certainly and eternally save from death.

Hosea 13:14 I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction: repentance shall be hid from mine eyes.Ver. 14. I will ransom them from the power of the grave, &c.] Some read it thus, I would have ransomed them, &c., I would have redeemed them, &c., had they been wise, or oughts (as we say), had not their incurable hardness and obstinace hindered; had they put forth into my hands, as unto a midwife, &c. But (alas) it is no such matter; therefore that which will die let it die. Repentance shall be hid from mine eyes] I am unchangeably resolved to ruin them; or, repentance should have been hid from mine eyes, my goodness toward them should never have altered, &c. But let us rather look upon the words as a most sweet and comfortable promise of a mighty redemption and glorious resurrection to the remnant according to the election of grace, whom God would not have to want comfort. I will ransom them. Here, therefore, he telleth his heirs of the promises, that he will bring them back out of captivity wherein they lay for dead, as it were; and that this their deliverance should be an evident argument and sure pledge of their resurrection to life eternal. To which purpose the apostle doth aptly and properly allege it, 1 Corinthians 15:55, and thereupon rings in death’ s ears (out of this text and Isaiah 25:8) the shrillest and sharpest note, the boldest and bravest challenge, that ever was heard from the mouth of a mortal: "Death, where is thy sting? Hell, where is thy victory? &c. Oh thanks be to God, who hath given us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ," and thereby hath made us more than conquerors, that is, triumphers, 2 Corinthians 2:14. But to return to the text. Be it, saith the prophet, that the commonwealth of Israel, both mother and child, must perish for want of wisdom, as was threatened in the foregoing verse; yet let not the penitent among them despair; for I, the Lord Christ, will ransom them, by laying down a valuable price (so the word Ephdem signifieth) from the power Heb. hand, of the grave, or of hell, that though hell had laid hands on them, yea, closed her mouth upon them, as once the whale had upon Jonas, yet I would open the doors of that Leviathan, and fetch them thence with a strong hand. I will redeem them from death] By becoming their near kinsman according to the flesh, whereby I shall have the next right of redemption. But how shall all this be done? After a wonderful manner. O death, I will be thy plagues] Not one, but many plagues, even so many as shall certainly do thee to death. The Vulgate rendereth it, Ero mors tua, O mors, morsus tuus, O inferne.

(14) O death . . . O grave.—The rendering should be, Where is thy plague, O death? Where is thy sting, O Sheol? as the LXX. have it, and as it is quoted in 1 Corinthians 15:55. The rendering of the English version is, however, supported by the Targum, Symmachus, Jerome, and many modern expositors. But the former interpretation is to be preferred. Many Christian interpreters (Henderson, Pusey, &c.) regard this as the sudden outburst of a gracious promise (as St. Paul takes it). The last clause then signifies that the gift and calling of God are without repentance. There is no room for any further merciful change of purpose. But the objection to this interpretation is that in the same breath the prophet rushes on to the most sweeping condemnation. Accordingly Schmoller, Wünsche, Huxtable (Speaker’s Commentary), and others understand the passage thus: “Shall I ransom them (doomed and dying in agonised travail) from the hand (or power) of Hades? Shall I redeem them from death? (Alas! no.) Where are thy plagues, O death? (Bring them forth.) Where is thy sting, O Hades? (Strike these reprobate ones.) Relenting is hid from my eyes.” It should be remembered that St. Paul quoted from Isaiah, “Death shall be swallowed up in victory,” and then, as here, calls in derisive irony upon death and Sheol to do their very worst at the very moment when they are about to be cast into the lake of fire.

Verse 14. I will ransom them from the power of the grave] In their captivity they are represented as dead and buried, which is a similar view to that taken of the Jews in the Babylonish captivity by Ezekiel in his vision of the valley of dry bones. They are now lost as to the purpose for which they were made, for which God had wrought so many miracles for them and for their ancestors; but the gracious purpose of God shall not be utterly defeated. He will bring them out of that grave, and ransom them from that death; for as they have deserved that death and disgraceful burial, they must be redeemed and ransomed from it, or still lie under it. And who can do this but God himself? And he will do it. In the prospect of this the prophet exclaims, in the person of the universal Redeemer, "O death, I will be thy plagues;" I will bring into thy reign the principle of its destruction. The Prince of life shall lie for a time under thy power, that he may destroy that power. O grave, I will be thy destruction] I will put an end to thy dreary domination by rising from the dead, and bringing life and immortality to life by my Gospel, and by finally raising from the death the whole human race in the day of the general resurrection. שאול sheol, which we translate grave, is the state of the dead. מות maveth, which we translate death, is the principle of corruption that renders the body unfit to be longer the tenement of the soul, and finally decomposes it. Sheol shall be destroyed, for it must deliver up all its dead. Maveth shall be annihilated, for the body shall be raised incorruptible. See the use which the apostle makes of this passage, 1 Corinthians 15:54-55; but he does not quote from the Hebrew, nor from any of the ancient versions. He had to apply the subject anew; and the Spirit, which had originally given the words, chose to adapt them to the subject then in hand, which was the resurrection of the dead in the last day. Instead of דבריך debareycha, thy plagues, one of my oldest MSS., ninety-six of Kennicott's and thirty-two of De Rossi's, have דברך debarcha, thy plague, that which shall carry thee off, as the plague does them who are affected by it. To carry off, carry away, is one of the regular meanings of the verb דבר dabar. Repentance shall be hid from mine eyes.] On these points I will not change my purpose; this is the signification of repentance when attributed to God.

14. But a father cannot long endure to contemplate the prospect of his child’s ruin. from the power of the grave … from death] Rather, from the hand of Sheσl … from Death. Sheσl and Death are used synonymously for the nether world (as in Isaiah 28:15; Psalms 6:5; Psalms 49:14). In Isaiah 5:14 Sheσl has an enormous mouth; so here a hand. O death … destruction] So Gesenius, following the Targum and Vulgate. But, as Dr Pusey remarks, on this view of the construction, we must render ‘I would be thy plagues’, &c., whereas the context requires an absolute declaration. Render therefore, Where are thy plagues, O Sheσl? where thy pestilence, O Death? (Comp. Psalms 91:6 Hebr.). ‘The plagues are the mille vi� leti the many kinds of sickness, the most terrible of which is called “the firstborn of Death”, Job 18:13 (Hitzig). Though all the plagues which fill the dark city of Sheσl were let loose upon Israel as a nation, they would be incapable of destroying Jehovah’s ‘son.’ St Paul quotes these words (1 Corinthians 15:55) in a translation of his own either as proving the doctrine of the Resurrection, or simply as well expressing his own triumphant feelings. Triumphant the tone of Hosea’s words certainly is, and hence some have thought Jehovah calls for the pestilences as agents in Israel’s threatened destruction, taking the first part of the verse interrogatively, ‘From the hand of Sheσl should I ransom them? from Death should I redeem them?’ But this is not the most natural explanation, nor is it required on the above view of the context. repentance shall be hid] Rather, repentance is hid. Perhaps an assurance of the irrevocable nature of the promise. But as the tone of promise is so transient, it seems better to take this clause in connexion with the threat of judgment in Hosea 13:12 of which indeed it may possibly once have formed the third member. At any rate, we need a resumption of threatening here, to prepare the way for the stern announcement in Hosea 13:15.

I will ransom them from the power of the grave - Literally, “from the hand,” i. e., the “grasp of the grave,” or “of hell.” God, by His prophets, mingles promises of mercy in the midst of His threats of punishment.

Utter destruction the just punishment for Israel’s guilt, Hosea 13:9-16.This discourse closes with another description of the hopelessness of Israel’s condition.