Hosea 7:16

"They return, but not to him that is on high; they are like a deceitful bow; their princes shall fall by the sword for the rage of their tongue; this shall be their derision in the land of Egypt."

The people returned all right, but not to God. They returned to the immoral orgies of Bethel, to the drunkenness, immorality, and vice which were the stock in trade of paganism.

"They are like a deceitful bow ..." Some scholars have understood this to be "a slack bow, one that looks good but has no spring, packs no power to propel the arrow."[15] However, Harper thought that:

The comparison is not to a bow which has lost its elasticity (See Psalms 120:2f; 78:37), nor one that cannot be used because it is relaxed, nor one whose string breaks without shooting the arrow, nor one which strikes and wounds the bowman, but rather to a bow which is expected to shoot in one direction but actually shoots in another, thus failing to accomplish its end."[16]

Harper is probably correct, such a view emphasizing the truth that Israel had failed to achieve the purpose for which God had called them and established them in the land of Canaan. Their purpose was to preserve for the benighted citizens of Adam's race the knowledge of the one true God, as distinguished from the gross idolatry into which the entire pre-Christian Gentile world had fallen. Instead of doing so, they promptly joined in the near-universal paganism and themselves forgot the true God. Their purpose included the segregation of the chosen people for the objective of ushering the Messiah into the world, when, in the fulfillment of God's plans, the Saviour would be born in Bethlehem; but instead, Ephraim had so mixed himself with the pagan peoples of his day that the fulfillment of God's purpose became impossible. Israel (the northern country) was useless for the achievement of such holy purposes, and therefore God removed them. The fulfillment of the high hopes and purposes of God would thenceforth rest in its entirety upon the southern kingdom of Judah, and Israel would be forsaken forever.