I will ransom them from the power of Sheol. I will redeem them from death! Death, where are your plagues? Sheol, where is your destruction?  Compassion will be hidden from my eyes.
"This verse lacks an interrogative particle!"[28]  That simply means that it cannot honestly be translated as a question, thus making it a threat.  Of course, those who have already decided what they think Hosea should have said, promptly supply the particle, "eraending the text" as they call it.[29]  Such emendations cannot be accepted.  Smith tacitly admitted that there is no authority for the change in the first part of the verse but accepted it anyway, basing it upon another false interpretation of the last clause, which he called, "the crux of the interpretation (which) rests in the last clause, `compassion is hid from my eyes.'"[30] But what has happened in that last clause  (Hosea 13:14b) is that the scholars have perverted it also in order to bolster their bastard translation of the main promise.  Let's take a look at it: