Hosea 9:14

Give them, O LORD: what wilt thou give? give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts. GIVE THEM, O LORD: WHAT WILT THOU GIVE? As if overwhelmed by feeling, he deliberates with God what is most desirable. GIVE THEM A MISCARRYING WOMB - of two evils he chooses the least. So great will be the calamity, that barrenness will be a blessing, though usually counted a great misfortune (; ; )....

Interpreters translate these words in a different way: “Give them what thou art about to give,” then they repeats “Give them;” but, as I think, they do not comprehend the design of the Prophet, and are wholly mistaken; for the Prophet appears here as one anxious and perplexed. He therefore presents himself here before God as a suppliant, as though he said, “Lord, I would gladly intercede for this people: what then is it that I should chiefly desire for them? Doubtless my chief wish for them in their miserable dispersion is, that thou wouldest give them a killing womb and dry breasts;” that is, that none may be born of them. Christ says, that when the last destruction of Jerusalem should come, the barren would be blessed (Luke 23:29;) and this he took from the common doctrine of Scripture, for many such passages may be observed in the Prophets. Among the blessings of God, this, we know, i...

11-17. God departs from a people, or from a person, when he withdraws his goodness and mercy from them; and when the Lord is departed, what can the creature do? Even though, for the present, good things seem to remain, yet the blessing is gone if God is gone. Even the children should perish with the parents. The Divine wrath dries up the root, and withers the fruit of all comforts; and the scattered Jews daily warn us to beware, lest we neglect or abuse the gospel. Yet every smiting is not a drying up of the root. It may be that God intends only to smite so that the sap may be turned to the root, that there may be more of root graces, more humility, patience, faith, and self-denial. It is very just that God should bring judgments on those who slight his offered mercy....

Verse Hosea 9:14. _GIVE THEM, O LORD: WHAT WILT THOU GIVE?_] There is an uncommon beauty in these words. The prophet, seeing the evils that were likely to fall upon his countrymen, begins to make intercession for them; but when he had formed the first part of his petition, "Give them, O Lord!" the prophetic light discovered to him that the petition would not be answered and that God was about to give them something widely different. Then changing his petition, which the Divine Spirit had interrupted, by signifying that he must not proceed in his request, he asks the question, then, "What wilt thou give them?" and the answer is, "Give them a miscarrying womb, and dry breasts." And this he is commanded to announce. It is probable that the Israelites had prided themselves in the _fruitfulness_ of their families, and the numerous _population_ of their country. God now tells them that...

GIVE THEM A MISCARRYING WOMB - The prophet prays for Israel, and debates with himself what he can ask for, amid this their determined wickedness, and God’s judgments. Since “Ephraim” was “to bring forth children to the murderer,” then it was mercy to ask for them, that they might have no children. Since such are the evils which await their children, grant them, O Lord, as a blessing, the sorrows of barrenness. What God had before pronounced as a punishment, should, as compared to other evils, be a mercy, and an object of prayer. So our Lord pronounces as to the destruction of Jerusalem. “Behold the days are coming, in which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps that never gave suck” Luke 23:29. “O unhappy fruitfulness and fruitful unhappiness, compared with which, barrenness, which among them was accounted a curse, becam

EXPOSITION HOSEA 9:1 Contain a warning against security arising from temporary prosperity. HOSEA 9:1 REJOICE NOT, O ISRAEL, FOR JOY, AS OTHER PEOPLE. The occasion on which the prophet penned this section was so no idolatrous merry-making in connection with harvest, and not any change of political situation. (1) The literal rendering of the first clause is, _rejoice not unto exultation_,_ _or _exceedingly_,_ as _the same expression is translated in Job 3:22; it is thus climactic. (2) The old versions take _el-gil_ as imperative, and read אַל; μηδὲ εὐφραίνον, equivalent to "nor ma

GIVE THEM, O LORD: WHAT WILT THOU GIVE THEM?.... The prophet foreseeing the butchery and destruction of their children, his heart ached for them; and, to show his tender affection for this people, was desirous of putting up a supplication for them; but was at a loss what to ask, their sins were so many, and so aggravated, and the decree gone forth for their destruction: or, "give them what thou wilt give them" l; so Jarchi, Kimchi, and Abarbinel, what thou hast threatened before to give them, Hosea 9:11; do not give them to be butchered and murdered before the eyes of their parents by their enemies; but rather let them die in the womb, or as soon as born; so it follows: GIVE THEM A MISCARRYING WOMB AND DRY BREASTS; the latter being a sign of the former, as physicians observe; or the words may be rendered disjunctively, give them one, or the other; that is, to the wives of the

CHAPTER 9:10-11:11 RETROSPECT, ISRAEL'S FAILURE AND RUIN _ 1. Israel once beloved, now fugitive wanderers (Hosea 9:10) _ 2. Their guilt and punishment (Hosea 10:1) 3. Exhortation and rebuke (Hosea 10:12) 4. The mercy of a merciful God (Hosea 11:1) Hosea 9:10. Like a wayfaring man who finds grapes and figs in the desert and delights in them, so the Lord found Israel in the desert and they were His pleasure when He led them out of Egypt. But they requited His love by going after Baal-peor, one of the filthiest gods of heat

THE NEMESIS OF AN IMPURE WORSHIP (_cf. Hosea 4:11_). Israel in unspoilt youth had appeared to Yahweh like grapes in the wilderness, but at the very first of the Canaanite shrines which they reached, Baal-Peor, they polluted themselves (Hosea 9:10). The consequent nemesis was barrenness [12] (Hosea 9:11).their root is dried up (Hosea 9:16) should be inserted (Wellhausen) between Hosea 9:11 and Hosea 9:12. If children are brought up to die prematurely ...

_ISRAEL'S GLORY FLEW AWAY -- HOSEA 9:11-14_ : The glory of Israel would fly away like a bird. They would no longer be a growing and productive nation. Their women would no longer be able to give birth. Ephraim had changed in a terrible way. They had moved from devotion to the true and living God to the low estate of an idolatrous worshiper. This was a certain path of ruin. Even if they did have children, God took them all away and left the people to mourn. Some of their children were taken away by misfortune in the home land and many others were taken away by Assyrian captivity. At first Israel served God faithfully. He looked upon them as a flourishing palm tree in fertile ground. She had strength and beauty like great cities. Their disobedience caused all of this to be reversed. Now Ephraim would lead her children out only to be slaughtered. The power of the nation was rever