"When Israel was a child, then I loved him, And called my son out of Egypt.
The highly emotional figure of  Hosea 11:8-9, depicting the torturing agony of a father (God) who cannot bear to give up a dissolute son (Israel) is one of the highlights of Hosea.  There is in it something of the agony that Almighty God Himself underwent (in a figure) when he gave his only begotten Son for the sins of the world.  However, it is a gross mistake to make this passage teach that, "God simply doesn't have the heart to destroy us wicked sinners, no matter what we do, and despite any of his threats of punishment."  Ah no, the blow will fall upon Ephraim; indeed Hosea views it as already accomplished in all of its terrible and bloody details.  The mercy which, even in their destruction, Ephraim was to receive pertains to two things: (1) the reduction of their penalty from extermination like that of Sodom and Gomorrah to a fate that would yet leave some of their descendents alive on the earth to partake of the blessings of the New Covenant, and (2) the laying of the full penalty of the sins upon the heart of God Himself, in the person of his Son, upon the Cross of Calvary.  It was there in the event of God's setting forth his Son to be the propitiation for our sins that God showed himself to be "just, and the justifier of them that believe in Christ"  (Romans 3:25).  It is the unconquerable love of God in Christ Jesus that dramatically comes into focus in this chapter.