Biblion Bible Commentary
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I Will Go and Return to My Place
Hosea 5:13-15
13 “When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah his wound, then Ephraim went to Assyria, and sent to King Jareb: but he is not able to heal you, neither will he cure you of your wound. · WEB
A sick nation consults a foreign power instead of a physician, and God's response is to leave and wait.
Verse 13 is a medical scene with a political diagnosis. Ephraim saw his sickness and Judah his wound — the perception was accurate — and the response was to go to Assyria, and sent to King Jareb.
The verdict on that treatment is flat: he is not able to heal you, neither will he cure you of your wound. The empire cannot do the thing it was hired for, and the book has already said what the sickness was and who could treat it Hosea 6:1.
Verse 14 shifts to the second animal image, and it is not slow. Like a lion... like a young lion... I myself will tear in pieces and go away. I will carry off, and there will be no one to deliver. The emphatic I myself rules out reading the empires as the real agent. Assyria will do the tearing, and the book insists on the hand behind it.
Then verse 15, which is the strangest sentence in the chapter and the most important. I will go and return to my place.
God withdrawing is stated as a deliberate relocation rather than an absence — the same fact chapter 5 gave from the searchers' side, when they brought flocks and herds and could not find him Hosea 5:6.
And the purpose clause explains the whole strategy: until they acknowledge their offense, and seek my face. The verb for acknowledging is the book's knowledge word again. The withdrawal is instrumental, aimed at producing exactly the seeking chapter 6 opens with — and it works, at least as far as the words go Hosea 6:1–3.
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