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.
What upsets the commentators is the totally unexpected appearance of a blessed promise like this in the midst of the most severe denunciations to be found in the whole Bible; but the setting is this: God had promised that through Israel "all the familes of the earth" should be blessed, and Hosea had been charged with the task of revealing God's purpose of rejection and destruction of the very Israel through whom the blessing of all men was promised to be conveyed!  Did that mean that the hope of human salvation was lost?  Indeed no!  The ultimate victory of God, upon behalf of men, over the consequences of sin would yet be achieved.  "I will ransom them!" thundered from the throne of God as the answer for any doubt.  God was not being defeated in the apostasy of Israel; it was Israel that was being defeated.  God would yet achieve his purpose through the righteous remnant which would remain, and particularly through the True Israel, even Jesus Christ our Lord!  How appropriately, therefore, do the words of this sublime promise shine like a blazing lamp in the midnight darkness of Israel's wretched apostasy.