"Therefore thus will I do to you, Israel; Because I will do this to you, Prepare to meet your God, Israel.
Full oft must they have thought, “we have not met Him yet,” and the thought must have dawned upon them; “It is because He willed to “do thus” with us, that He bid us “prepare to meet” Him. He met us not, when He did it. It was then something further on; it is in the Messiah that we arc to meet and to see Him.” Jerome: “Prepare to meet thy God,” receiving with all eagerness the Lord coming unto thee.” So then, is this further sense which lay in a the words , “he (as did Hosea at the end) exhorts the ten tribes, after they had been led captive by the Assyrians, not to despond, but to “prepare to meet their God,” that is, to acknowledge and receive Christ their God, when the Gospel should be preached to them by the Apostles.” Rib.: “God punisheth, not in cruelty, but in love. He warns then those whom He strikes, to understand what He means by these punishments, not thinking themselves abandoned by God, but, even when they seem most cast away and reprobate, rousing themselves, in the hope of God’s mercy through Christ, to call upon God, and “prepare to meet their God.” For no one’s salvation is so desperate, no one is so stained with every kind of sin, but that God cometh to him by holy inspirations, to bring back the wanderer to Himself. Thou therefore, O Israel, whoever thou art, who didst once serve God, and now servest vilest pleasures, when thou feelest God coming to thee, prepare to meet Him. Open the door of thy heart to that most kind and benevolent Guest, and, when thou hearest His Voice, deafen not thyself: flee not, like Adam. For He seeketh thee, not to judge, but to save thee.”