Punishment is not merely for the sake of punishment, but to enable Israel to reform and correct its way to attain the moral and ethical standards set by God. He hath smitten, and He will bind us up. This, then, was the promise of redemption given by God to the Israelites through the mouth of Hosea. It had nothing to do with me, Jesus, as some Christians think. They profess to see in these words a prophesy of my resurrection, on the third day.
Nothing can be further from the truth.
Hosea had no inkling of my coming, as he has told me, and his words were directed only to the Hebrew people without the slightest idea his words might be misconstrued to be applied to another situation more than seven centuries later. But Hosea did have an insight into the redemption of his people. Since, in his day, God was presumed to be living in the Temple in Jerusalem, a return to the Lord meant a material return to the land as well as a moral reform. The strong emphasis laid by Hebrew writers on the physical return or ingathering of the exiles was made inevitable by the two exiles suffered by the Hebrew people during this millennium of which I speak. Later I realized that return to the land where God dwells was a concept which in its wider meaning really represented a return to the pristine purity of the soul and life in the Spiritual Heavens.