Hosea 11:9

Not execute. The prophet paints a glorious picture of the working of divine love. The Lord will not execute the burning heat of His wrath, nor destroy Ephraim utterly. If God’s love in the beginning of His interest in Israel was something great and exalted (see vs. 1-4), it is something greater now, as being in the form of compassion (vs. 8, 9), in which the Lord refuses to give up His people, altogether unworthy as they had become of the love He had shown them. Destroy Ephraim. While man may punish to destroy, God punishes to correct and amend (see Jer. 29:11). God’s anger issues in a course very different from that of men. They are intent upon vengeance; He upon reconciliation. I am God. This is the basic reason for the divine mercy just expressed — God’s inherently holy character that cannot but honor and fulfill His covenant of everlasting love with Israel. He is God, and so must be measured by the divine standard of that love (see Rom. 8:37-39; 1 John 4:16), and not by man’s vengeful standard. The Holy One. This explains why God punishes iniquity and yet continues to show mercy. The holiness that cannot tolerate the guilty is also the holiness of truth and faithfulness. Into the city. These words signify that God would not come as an enemy to destroy utterly, as He had come to the cities of the plain of Sodom (v. 8).