This chapter gives an account of some who were truly penitent, and stirred up one another to return to the Lord, encouraged by his power, grace, and goodness, Hos.

Come, and let us return unto the Lord The Septuagint and Arabic versions connect these words with the last clause of the preceding chapter, adding the word, “saying”; and so the Targum and Syriac version, “they shall say”; and very rightly as to the sense; for they are the words of those persons…

After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up The Jews, in their present state, are as dead men, both in a civil and spiritual sense, and their conversion and restoration will be as life from the dead; they are like persons buried, and, when they are restored, they will be…

Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord The word “if” is not in the original text, and the passage is not conditional, but absolute; for as persons, when converted, know Christ, and not before, when he is revealed to them, and in them, as the only Saviour and Redeemer, so they continue…

O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee? &c.] Or, “for thee” [[22]]? The Lord having observed the effect and consequence of his going and returning to his place, of his leaving his people for a long time under afflictions and in distress; namely, their thorough…

Therefore have I hewed them by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth Sharply reproved them for their sins by the prophets, who were as lapidaries that cut stone, or us hewers of timber that cut off the knotty parts; so these by preaching the terrors of the law, which is a killing…

For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice That is, the one rather than the other, as the next clause explains it. Sacrifices were of early use, even before the law of Moses; they were of divine appointment, and were approved and accepted of by the Lord; they were types of Christ, and led to him, and…

But they, like men, have transgressed the covenant The false prophets, as Aben Ezra, whom he threatened to cut off and slay, ; or rather Ephraim and Judah, whose goodness was so fickle and unstable; and who, instead of doing acts of mercy, and seeking after the true knowledge of God and his…

Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity The chief city in the land of Gilead, which lay beyond Jordan, inhabited by Gad and Reuben, and the half tribe of Manasseh; and so belonged to the ten tribes, whose sins are here particularly observed.

And as troops of robbers wait for a man As a gang of highwaymen or footpads lie in wait in a ditch, or under a hedge, or in a cave of a rock or mountain, for a man they know will come by that way, who is full of money, in order to rob him; or, as Saadiah interprets it, as fishermen stand upon the…

I have seen an horrible thing in the house of Israel Idolatry, the calves set up at Dan and Bethel, which God saw with abhorrence and detestation; or the prophet saw it, and it made his hair stand on end as it were, as the word [[6]] signifies, that such wickedness should be committed by a…

Also, O Judah, he hath set an harvest for thee That is, God hath set and appointed a time of wrath and vengeance for thee, which is sometimes signified by a harvest, ; because thou hast been guilty of idolatry also, as well as Ephraim or the ten tribes: or rather it may be rendered, “but, O Judah”…