"I will take and go, and I will take away and there is no one who can deliver: going I will return to my place until you fail and seek my face." LXX: "And I will snatch, and go and take away, and there will be no one who can deliver: I will go and return to my rightful place until they are destroyed and seek my face." It is asked, if God takes, and takes away, and holds, no one can take them from his hands, according to what is written: "No one can snatch them from the hand of my Father" (John X, 29) how was Judas snatched from the hand of God through betrayal? We will briefly answer this, that no one can snatch from the hand of God: however, he who is held, can by his own will fall away from the hand of God. And what follows: "Going, I shall return to my place," we ought to accept the place of God, his magnificence and majesty: so that he does not in any way descend to deal with men, become angry, show mercy, forget, become like a panther, turn into a lion, change into beasts: but may despise human things, and allow those whom he formerly protected to submit to their enemies, so that they may waste away, and fail, and die, and afterwards seek the face of the Lord and say: "Illuminate your face and we will be saved" (Ps. LXXIX, 4). "And: Show us, Lord, your mercy, and grant us your salvation" (Psalm 85:8). Even to heretics and the negligent Church, God turns into a panther and a lion; and He will reclaim the prey from those who had previously seized it from the Church, so that those who had been lost might be saved when they are captured. He will not dwell in the gathering of the wicked but will return to His place, as He said, "I am in the Father, and the Father is in me" (John 14:1). He will reject and despise them until they are consumed by their impiousness and seek Him through penance, abandoned as they once were. Some think heaven is God's dwelling place; thus God, offended by those who dwell on earth, will return and make perish those who, through the enormity of their sins, have converted the most merciful Lord into a wild beast for themselves.
By “my place” we have to understand God’s place, his splendor and majesty, so that by no means according to the dispensation does he descend to men, become angry, merciful, forgetful, become as a panther, turn into a lion, change into beasts. On the contrary, he disdains human things and allows those whom he once protected to be cast to enemies so that they may languish, disappear and be destroyed, and seek eventually the face of the Lord.… Others consider God’s place the heaven where God returns after being offended by the inhabitants of the earth, and he allows to go to ruin those who, due to the multitude of their sins, turned the mercy of the Lord into the rage of beasts toward them.
It seems that the saying refers very suitably to the mystery of Christ and the redemption through him, pointing to the conversion to God. For the face of God we seek signifies most certainly the Son himself, “who is the image, and the radiance, and the very seal of the Father’s nature.” Thus the true face of God and Father is the Son, inasmuch as he is recognized in him: “And who saw him, saw the Father.” The psalmist thus calls him when he cries out to God of all, saying: “Cause your face to shine upon your servant.” Indeed, just as from the person of those who were already transformed according to the Son through the Spirit: “The light of your face, O Lord, has been marked upon us.” Or as the prophet says: “The light of our face, the anointed Lord.”
“They seek early” seems to indicate here that they, as if awakened from the sleep of thoughtlessness which was in them, and further as if brought from night and darkness to light and day, will call out to one another that it is fitting to return to the Lord. This is a return to the senses of those fallen into deception and those taken up by the worship of idols. For the fruit of vigilance is at present seeking to get out of the gloom which is demonic.
[AD 420] Jerome on Hosea 5:15