Hosea 13:8

As a bear. Few animals are fiercer than the she-bear is, when she is robbed of her cubs or when she is very hungry. The LXX for the opening clause reads, “I will meet them by the way of the Assyrians, as a she-bear excited.” The three wild beasts mentioned, the lion, the leopard, and the bear, aptly display the power of God’s wrath and the fury of His anger. If the sinner escaped from the lion, the leopard overtook him; if he escaped from the leopard the savage she-bear met him. It seems that Hosea is endeavoring to bring to his people with cumulative force a realization of what the visitation of divine wrath means. The prophet here employs the same terrifying figures from the animal world that are often elsewhere used to symbolize the nations that Satan employs to oppose and devour God’s people (see Jer. 4:7; 50:17, 44; Eze 32:2; Dan. 7:4-7).

Caul of their heart. Literally, “the enclosure of their heart”; that is, the pericardium, the membrane that surrounds the heart. Israel had closed their heart against God. The divine punishment is pictured as the rending of this closed heart by a lion. The prophet presents a graphic and impressive parallel to the day of judgment, when all hearts will be laid open before God (see Heb. 4:13; 10:30, 31).