(Ὠσηέ)
This prophet’s gracious words in 2:23, containing a Divine promise that faithless Israel will be restored to God’s favour and be for ever His faithful people, receive in St. Paul’s revolutionary exegesis (Romans 9:25 f.) a new application to the Gentiles, who had not, till the Christian era, been the people or the beloved of God, but who at length become the objects of His love and are called the sons of the living God. Before the coming of the Messiah there was probably no more Christ-like teacher than the prophet of Mount Ephraim, who provided our Lord with His favourite quotation, ‘I will have mercy [= ḥesed, love] and not sacrifice’; and it is evident that his prevision of a new covenant, linking Divine and human love in everlasting bonds, was scarcely less precious to the Apostle of the Gentiles than to the Saviour of the world.
James Strahan.