Hosea 13:7-8

These verses teach that the result of their sins is inevitable destruction, and that Jehovah, merciful and gracious though he is, has now divested himself of all compassion on them. The appropriateness of the terrible figures here employed arises from the fact that Israel had been compared in the previous verse to a flock fed and filled in a luxuriant pasture; the punishment of that flock is now fitly compared to "the tearing in pieces and devouring of that fattened flock by wild beasts." The beasts in question are a lion, a leopard, a bear, a lioness, and fierce wild beasts in general.