The God of Free Grace: We can reasonably consider this oracle to be the last message delivered by Hosea in his prophetic career, and therefore to be properly placed by the redactor at the end of the Hosianic collection. The NIV paraphrases verse 1b. The Hebrew of that line reads, “You have stumbled in your iniquity.” Israel has stumbled. It is already falling, and its end is near.

Hosea has announced that inevitable end in the oracles that have gone before. The plagues of death and the destruction of Sheol must come upon his people in the judgment decreed by God upon their sin (see the comment at 13:14). But Hosea has also announced that God cannot give up his people—his adopted son—forever (11:1–11); that on the other side of the judgment God will take Israel—his beloved wife—once more int…