Was Israel’s repentance genuine or fake? (Hosera 6:1–3)
6 `Come, and we turn back unto Jehovah, For He hath torn, and He doth heal us, He doth smite, and He bindeth us up. 2 He doth revive us after two days, In the third day He doth raise us up, And we live before Him. 3 And we know -- we pursue to know Jehovah, As the dawn prepared is His going forth, And He cometh in as a shower to us, As gathered rain -- sprinkling earth.'
Hosea 6:1 - 3
ESV - 1 Come, let us return to the Lord ; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up. 2 After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him.
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Asked August 11 2019
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Jack Gutknecht
Supporter
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Tim Maas
Supporter
The words cited in the question were not spoken by the people of Israel, but by God. Through Hosea the prophet, God was describing the type of sincere repentance on the part of Israel that would move Him to have mercy on the nation in response to the judgment that He would bring upon them because of their unfaithfulness to Him through the idolatry that they had practiced (which the book of Hosea as a whole compares to the unfaithfulness of a wife toward her husband). God was saying that, if only Israel would display the type of repentance that He was describing and return to Him, He would pardon them, and once again show love toward them.
Jack Gutknecht
Supporter
These words in Hosea 6:3 of repentance are lovely but as morning clouds are often pictured as a simile for transitoriness (e.g., Job 7:9; Isa 44:22; Hos 6:4; 13:3, Israel's repentance too was extremely short-lived (Hosea 6:4).
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