Hosea 13:14

‘Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol?

Shall I redeem them from death?

O death, where are your plagues?

O Sheol, where is your destruction?

Compassion (repentance) will be hid from my eyes.'

But what of the Redeemer from Egypt? What of the Deliverer from death? They had always relied on Him in the past (as was made clear in Hosea 13:4), and in the end He had always delivered them. Will He not then act now in this desperate situation when they are like a still-born child. YHWH considers His reply. ‘Shall I ransom them from the power of the grave (Sheol was the dark underworld of the grave)? Shall I redeem them from death? And then with a shake of His head He says ‘No', and then calls on death and the grave to seize them. He calls on Sheol to come forth with its destruction, and to death to come forth with its plagues, and then to inflict them on His people, because they are no longer His people and compassion is hid from His eyes. He will no longer be their Deliverer. This interpretation fits aptly into the sequence of the passage.

Some, however, argue that while it is possible to put the first two statements as questions, there are no specific indications for doing so in the Hebrew. They would therefore translate as ‘I will ransom them from the power of Sheol, I will redeem them from death', in other words they would not be still-born, with the corollary being that it would be in order that they might face plagues and destruction. What might appear like mercy would in fact be the opposite. They would be delivered in order to face worse. Sheol and death would still inflict their prey (like the lion, and the leopard, and the bear).

A third alternative that is mooted is that it should be taken as a fully positive statement, in line with previous times when Hosea has suddenly introduced a positive note into a negative context (e.g. Hosea 1:10 to Hosea 2:1; Hosea 2:7; Hosea 6:1; Hosea 10:12; Hosea 11:12 b). The idea would then be that whatever might happens to Israel in the meantime, in the end YHWH will deliver them from Sheol, He will deliver them from the power of the grave. The plagues of death and the destruction of Sheol will be rendered powerless because Israel will live again (compare Ezekiel 37:1). And nothing can make YHWH repent of that fact, because ‘repentance is hid from His eyes.' This would tie in completely with Paul's use of the text in 1 Corinthians 15:55. The main problem with this interpretation is that there is nothing, not even a whisper, in the immediate context to support it. The emphasis in the context is all on death and destruction, while ‘repentance is hid from my eyes' more naturally means that He will not repent because of the evil of their doings. On the other hand such an interpretation does sit well with Hosea 14:1.