Equally instructive is the method by which Hosea seeks to move Israel from this oblivion and bring them to a true knowledge of God. He insists that their recovery can only be the work of God Himself--the living God working in their lives to-day as He did in the past of the nation. To those past deeds it is useless for this generation to go back, and seek again the memory of which they have disinherited themselves. Let them rather realise that the same God still lives. The knowledge of Him may be recovered by appreciating His deeds in the life of to-day. And these deeds must first of all be violence and terror, if only to rouse them from their sensuous sloth. The last verse we have quoted, about Israel's complacency and pride, is followed by this terrible one: _I shall be_[717] _to them like a lion, like a leopard I shall leap_[718] _upon the way. I will meet them as a bear bereft_ of her cubs, _that I may tear the caul of their heart, that I may devour them there like a lion: the wild beast shall rend them._[719] This means that into Israel's insensibility to Himself God must break with facts, with wounds, with horrors they cannot evade. Till He so acts, their own efforts, _then shall we know if we hunt up to know_,[720] and their assurance, _My God, we do know Thee_,[721] are very vain. Hosea did not speak for nothing. Events were about to happen more momentous than even the Exodus and the Conquest of the Land. By 734 the Assyrians had depopulated Gilead and Galilee; in 725 the capital itself was invested, and by 721 the whole nation carried into captivity. God had made Himself known. We are already aware, however, that Hosea did not count this as God's final revelation to His people. Doom is not doom to him, as it was to Amos, but discipline; and God withdraws His people from their fascinating land only that He may have them more closely to Himself. He will bring His Bride into the wilderness again, the wilderness where they first met, and there, when her soul is tender and her stupid heart broken, He will plant in her again the seeds of His knowledge and His love. The passages which describe this are among the most beautiful of the book. They tell us of no arbitrary conquest of Israel by Jehovah, of no magic and sudden transformation. They describe a process as natural and gentle as a human wooing; they use, as we have seen, the very terms of this: _I will woo her, bring her into the wilderness, and speak home to her heart.... And it shall be in that day that thou shalt call Me, My husband, ... and I will betroth thee to Me for ever in righteousness and in justice, and in leal love and in mercies and in faithfulness; and thou shalt know Jehovah._[722] FOOTNOTES: [663] i. 2. [664] iv. 6. [665] iv. 1. [666] v. 4. [667] ii. 10. [668] xi. 3. [669] iv. 6. [670] vi. 6. [671] ii. 22. [672] viii. 2. [673] ידע. [674] The Latin _videre_, _scire_, _noscere_, _cognoscere_, _intelligere_, _sapere_ and _peritus esse_.