Upon this gracious passage there follows one of those swift revulsions of feeling, which we have learned almost to expect in Hosea. His insight again overtakes his love. The people will not respond to the goodness of their God; it is impossible to work upon minds so fickle and insincere. Discipline is what they need. _He shall return to the land of Egypt, or Asshur shall be his king_ (it is still an alternative), _for they have refused to return_ to Me....[607] 'Tis but one more instance of the age-long apostasy of the people. _My people have a bias_[608] _to turn from Me; and though they_ (the prophets) _call them upwards, none of them can lift them_.[609] Yet God is God, and though prophecy fail He will attempt His Love once more. There follows the greatest passage in Hosea--deepest if not highest of his book--the breaking forth of that exhaustless mercy of the Most High which no sin of man can bar back nor wear out. _How am I to give thee up, O Ephraim?_ How _am I to let thee go, O Israel?_ _How am I to give thee up?_ _Am I to make an Admah of thee--a Ṣeboim?_ _My heart is turned upon Me, My compassions begin to boil:_ _I will not perform the fierceness of Mine anger,_ _I will not turn to destroy Ephraim;_ _For God am I and not man,_ _The Holy One in the midst of thee, yet I come not to consume!_[610] Such a love has been the secret of Hosea's persistence through so many years with so faithless a people, and now, when he has failed, it takes voice to itself and in its irresistible fulness makes this last appeal. Once more before the end let Israel hear God in the utterness of His Love! The verses are a climax, and obviously to be succeeded by a pause. On the brink of his doom, will Israel turn to such a God, at such a call? The next verse, though dependent for its promise on this same exhaustless Love, is from an entirely different circumstance, and cannot have been put by Hosea here.[611] FOOTNOTES: [595] See above, p. 253. [596] St. John's Gospel, i. 12, 13. [597] Or occasionally for the king as the nation's representative. [598] See below, pp. 321-3. [599] 1 John iii. [600] So rightly the LXX. [601] LXX., rightly separating מִפְּנֵיהֶם into מִפָּנָי and הֵם, which latter is the nominative to the next clause. [602] So again rightly the LXX. [603] The reading is uncertain. The לֹא of the following verse (6) must be read as the Greek reads it, as לֹו, and taken with ver. 5. [604] x. 11. [605] Or lifted forward from the neck to the jaws. [606] Isa. lxiii. 13, 14. [607] Ver. 6 has an obviously corrupt text, and, weakening as it does the climax of ver. 5, may be an insertion. [608] _Are hung_ or _swung towards turning away from Me_. [609] This verse is also uncertain. [610] For בעיר, which makes nonsense, read לבעור, _to consume_, or with Wellhausen amend further לבער אובה לא, _I am not willing to consume_.