Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 11:1

"When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt." — Hosea 11:1 (ASV)

When Israel was a child, then I loved him - God loved Israel, as He Himself formed it, before it corrupted itself. He loved it for the sake of the fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as He says, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated (Malachi 1:2). Then, when it was weak, helpless, oppressed by the Egyptians, afflicted, destitute, God loved him, cared for him, delivered him from oppression, and called him out of Egypt.

“When did He love Israel? When, by His guidance, Israel regained freedom, his enemies were destroyed, he was fed with “food from heaven,” he heard the voice of God, and received the Law from Him. He was unformed in Egypt; then he was shaped by the rules of the Law, so as to be matured there. He was a child in that vast wilderness.”

For he was nourished, not by solid food, but by milk, that is, by the rudiments of piety and righteousness, so that he might gradually attain the strength of a man. So the Law was a schoolmaster, to keep Israel as a child, by the discipline of a child, until the time came when all who did not despise the heavenly gifts would receive the Spirit of adoption.

The prophet then, in order to show the exceeding guilt of Israel, says, “When Israel was a child,” (in the wilderness, for then he was born when he bound himself to conform to the divine law, and was not yet matured) “I loved him,” that is, I gave him the law, priesthood, judgments, precepts, instructions; I loaded him with the most ample benefits; I preferred him to all nations, expending on him, as on My chief heritage and special possession, much watchful care and effort.”

I called My son out of Egypt - As He said to Pharaoh, Israel is My son, even My firstborn; let My son go, that he may serve Me (Exodus 4:22–23). God chose him out of all nations, to be His special people. Yet God also chose him, not for himself, but because He willed that Christ, His only Son, should “after the flesh” be born of him; and for, and in, the Son, God called His people, “My son.”

“The people of Israel were called a son, regarding the elect, yet only for the sake of Him, the only-begotten Son—begotten, not adopted—who, “after the flesh,” was to be born of that people, so that, through His Passion, He might bring many sons to glory, not disdaining to have them as brethren and co-heirs. For, had He not come, who was to come, the Well-Beloved Son of God, Israel too could never, any more than the other nations, have been called the son of so great a Father, as the Apostle, himself of that people, says, For we were, by nature, children of wrath, even as others (Ephesians 2:3).”

“Since, however, these words relate to literal Israel—the people whom God brought out by Moses—how were they fulfilled in the infant Jesus when He was brought back out of Egypt, as Matthew 2:15 teaches us they were?”

Because Israel himself was a type of Christ, and for the sake of Him who was to be born of the seed of Israel, God called Israel “My son”; for His sake only did He deliver him. The two deliverances, of the whole Jewish people and of Christ the Head, occupied the same position in God’s dispensations. He rescued Israel, whom He called His son, in its childish and infantine condition, at the very beginning of its existence as a people. His true Son by Nature, Christ our Lord, He brought up in His Infancy, when He began to manifest His mercies to us in Him. Both had, by His appointment, taken refuge in Egypt; both were, by His miraculous call to Moses in the bush and to Joseph in the dream, recalled from it.

Matthew apparently quotes these words, not to prove anything, but to point out the relation of God’s former dealings to the latter, the beginning and the end, what relates to the body, and what relates to the Head.

He tells us that the former deliverance had its completion in Christ, and that in His deliverance was the full, solid completion of Israel's deliverance; and that then indeed it might, in its completest fullness, be said, “Out of Egypt have I called My Son.”

When Israel was brought out of Egypt, the figure took place; when Christ was called, the reality was fulfilled. The act itself, on God’s part, was prophetic. When He delivered Israel and called him His firstborn, He willed, in the course of time, to bring up from Egypt His Only-Begotten Son. The words are prophetic because the event they speak of was prophetic.

“They speak of Israel as one collective body and, as it were, one person, called by God “My son,” namely, by adoption, still in the years of innocence, and beloved by God, called by God out of Egypt by Moses, as Jesus, His true Son, was by the Angel.”

The following verses are not prophetic, because in them the prophet no longer speaks of Israel as one, but as composed of the many sinful individuals in it.

Israel was a prophetic people regarding this dispensation of God toward him, not regarding his rebellions and sins.