Hosea 5:14

Hebrew Bible

13 When Ephraim saw his sickness and Judah saw his wound, then Ephraim turned to Assyria and begged its great king for help. But he will not be able to heal you. He cannot cure your wound! 14 I will be like a lion to Ephraim, like a young lion to the house of Judah. I myself will tear them to pieces then I will carry them off, and no one will be able to rescue them! 15 Then I will return again to my lair until they have suffered their punishment. Then they will seek me; in their distress they will earnestly seek me.

1 Maccabees 3:4

Deuterocanon

1 Then his son Judas, who was called Maccabeus, took command in his place. 2 All his brothers and all who had joined his father helped him; they gladly fought for Israel. 3 He extended the glory of his people. Like a giant he put on his breastplate; he bound on his armor of war and waged battles, protecting the camp by his sword. 4 He was like a lion in his deeds, like a lion's cub roaring for prey. 5 He searched out and pursued those who broke the law; he burned those who troubled his people.

 Notes and References

"... Books like 1 Maccabees were written to celebrate the sons of Mattathias as “the family of those people through whom deliverance was given to Israel” (1 Maccabees 5:62), God’s chosen agents who rescued Israel from the ills that beset it. Two poetic passages are particularly important for the author’s interpretation of the role of this family in the plan of God, namely, the poem in praise of Judas in 1 Maccabees 3:3–9 and the encomium on Simon in 1 Maccabees 14:4–15. The author lauds Judas as “a lion in his deeds, a lion’s cub roaring for prey” (1 Maccabees 3:4), recalling Hosea’s description of God’s agent (Hosea 5:14) as well as Jacob’s description of Judah’s ancient namesake (Genesis 49:9). By cleansing Israel of apostate and lapsed Jews, Judas “turned away wrath from Israel” (1 Maccabees 3:8), words directly reminiscent of the important episode of Phinehas, whose similarly violent response to compromise won him the covenant of an eternal priesthood (Numbers 25:10–13; see also 1 Maccabees 2:23–26, 54). Judas emerges as a hero of biblical proportions striding onto the scene, entrusted with restoring and extending “the glory of his people” ..."

DeSilva, David A. The Jewish Teachers of Jesus, James, and Jude: What Earliest Christianity Learned from the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (p. 143) Oxford University Press, 2012

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