Hosea's most simple definition of repentance is that _of returning unto God_. For _turning_ and _re-turning_ the Hebrew language has only one verb--shûbh. In the Book of Hosea there are instances in which it is employed in the former sense;[724] but, even apart from its use for repentance, the verb usually means to return. Thus the wandering wife in the second chapter says, _I will return to my former husband_;[725] and in the threat of judgment it is said, _Ephraim will return to Egypt_.[726] Similar is the sense in the phrases _His deeds will I turn back upon him_[727] and _I will not turn back to destroy Ephraim_.[728] The usual meaning of the verb is therefore, not merely to turn or change, but to turn right round, to turn back and home.[729] This is obviously the force of its employment to express repentance. For this purpose Hosea very seldom uses it alone.[730] He generally adds either the name by which God had always been known, Jehovah,[731] or the designation of Him, as _their own God_.[732] We must emphasise this point if we would appreciate the thoroughness of our prophet's doctrine, and its harmony with the preaching of the New Testament. To Hosea repentance is no mere change in the direction of one's life. It is a turning back upon one's self, a retracing of one's footsteps, a confession and acknowledgment of what one has abandoned. It is a coming back and a coming home to God, exactly as Jesus Himself has described in the Parable of the Prodigal. As Hosea again and again affirms, the Return to God, like the New Testament Metanoia, is the effect of new knowledge; but the new knowledge is not of new facts--it is of facts which have been present for a long time and which ought to have been appreciated before. Of these facts Hosea describes three kinds: the nation's misery, the unspeakable grace of their God, and their great guilt in turning from Him. Again it is as in the case of the prodigal: his hunger, his father, and his cry, "I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight."