Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents

5:15 I will return again to my place alludes to the immediately preceding figure of the lion returning to its den; it is the Lord speaking, and until they acknowledge their guilt . . . in their distress declares what he expects of his people.

6:1 let us return to the Lord. Now the prophet includes himself in his imagining of humble submission to the Almighty's discipline. The OT prophets did not separate themselves from the plight of their people (Isa. 6:5; 53:4-6).

6:2 After two days he will revive us shows that even after this fierce slaying (v. 1) they are not beyond the Lord's healing. Healing is a picture of a complete metamorphosis: a rising from the dead on the third day. The Septuagint's Greek translation for on the third day he will raise us up is part of what lay behind Jesus' and the NT writers' statements that Jesus' resurrection "on the third day" was according to the Scriptures (Luke 24:46; 1 Cor. 15:4; cf. also Jonah in Matt. 12:40). Hosea was not writing about the Messiah directly, however, but about the people of Israel. The NT use of this idea depends on seeing a parallel between Israel's resurrection on the third day in this verse, and Jesus as the Messiah representing and embodying his people. The potential of Israel's third-day resurrection is to be ultimately realized in the resurrection of the One who acted in Israel's stead (cf. Matt. 3:13-15). This picture of Israel's death and resurrection thus sets the pattern for what eventually will be accomplished in and through Christ.