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.
Still another gross error easily fastens itself upon this passage, and that is to apply it to a restoration of secular Israel, Ephraim in particular.  Speaking of most modern scholars, Ward said, "Several of them (Robinson, Weiser, and Knight) interpret it as a promise of new life to Ephraim."[35]  Such a view could be correct only in so far as it is restricted to any righteous remnant that might have remained in Israel after the punishments announced by the prophet Hosea.  There is certainly nothing in this that promises God's resurrecting the evil old state and monarchy of apostate Israel.  That thing went down to everlasting death in the pre-Christian era; nor is anything promised in the current dispensation of God's grace that assures any such thing even in the remote future.