How to read this page

An Intertextuality Pair — one connection between two passages, shown as linked verse cards: the Later text and the Earlier text it quotes, alludes to or echoes. The Significance essay explains why the link matters and where it points in Christ.

Reference Type— how explicit the link is: Quotation, Allusion, or Echo
Connection Method(s)— how it carries meaning: e.g. Typology, Promise-Fulfillment, Analogy, Longitudinal Theme
Found via— where the connection was identified, e.g. the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge or an Anchor-Text Network

Graph View — tap the constellation icon in the top bar to see this page's connections as a web of light: gold points are passages, and the coloured threads are the connection types. Click any type in the graph's own legend to filter it in or out, and use the expand control for the full-screen night sky.

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Intertextuality Pair

Hosea 11:8 → Deuteronomy 29:23

Allusion

Later text

Hosea 11:8BSB

How could I give you up, O Ephraim? How could I surrender you, O Israel? How could I make you like Admah? How could I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart is turned within Me; My compassion is stirred!

Earlier text

Deuteronomy 29:23BSB

All its soil will be a burning waste of sulfur and salt, unsown and unproductive, with no plant growing on it, just like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in His fierce anger.

Significance

Hosea 11:8 names Admah and Zeboiim — the cities destroyed alongside Sodom and Gomorrah — echoing Deuteronomy 29:23's warning that covenant unfaithfulness would make Israel's land "like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim." But whereas Deuteronomy invokes these cities as a threat of what God will do, Hosea dramatically reverses the logic: "How could I make you like Admah? How could I treat you like Zeboiim?" God's compassion (נִחוּמַי, nichumai) is "stirred" within Him, refusing to execute the very covenant curse Deuteronomy prescribed. This is one of the OT's most striking contrasts — the same God who warned of total destruction now recoils from applying it, grounding His restraint not in Israel's merit but in His own divine nature: "For I am God and not man" (11:9).

Found via: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Contrast