Hosea 9:11 - Meaning and Application

In the verses just before this, we saw Israel’s sin as something inherited from their fathers. Here we see their punishment passed on to their children. Death entered the world through sin at the beginning, and sin still brings death with it.

We can notice, first, Ephraim’s sin. Ephraim is another name for Israel, especially the northern kingdom. The people would not listen to God. They did not pay attention to his word or to his warnings through trouble. They would not believe what he said, and they would not let him guide them. He told them their duty, their true good, and their danger, but they ignored him. What he said through his words and his prophets was to them like a story they heard and forgot.

Because they would not listen, their actions were wicked and bold. These were not small weaknesses, but open and defiant sins. People cannot help doing evil when they refuse to hear the Word of God, which should teach and persuade them to do what is right. Their worship was also corrupt. “All their wickedness is in Gilgal,” a place that had become known for idolatry. It may have been chosen because it had once been a place of important meetings between God and Israel. But now it was the center from which idolatry spread through the nation. When worship is corrupted, morals soon become corrupt too. False worship opens the door to every other evil.

Their leaders were also guilty. All their princes had turned away. The kings of the ten tribes, or the rulers at that time, had gone on in evil ways. They kept turning aside from what was right and stayed in those paths.

Second, we see God’s anger against Ephraim because of sin. This is described in several ways to show how deeply sin offends his pure holiness and how hateful it makes sinners to him. He leaves them. When they turn away from him, they should not expect him to keep giving them his protection and blessing. “Woe also to them when I depart from them” shows how terrible it is when God leaves a people. Those are in a truly miserable state whom God has forsaken. All our well-being depends on his loving presence. When he goes, every blessing goes with him, and trouble comes with it.

He also hates them. “In Gilgal, where all their wickedness is, there I hated them.” The place where they committed their sins became the place where God abhorred them. He had once shown favor to their ancestors there, but now their ingratitude made that same place a witness against them. He does not stop at hatred. He says he will love them no more. The breach between God and Israel is as wide as the sea and cannot be repaired. This matches his earlier word, “I will no longer have mercy on the house of Israel” (Hosea 1:6-7).

He will also cast them out of his house. Because of their wicked deeds, he will drive them from among his own people. He will no longer own them as belonging to his household in the world. He will put them out like unfaithful tenants who pay no rent, or useless servants who bring him neither honor nor service. Those who profane God’s house can expect to be removed from it.

He will drive them far away too. The prophet echoes God’s sentence, “My God will cast them away.” Not only out of his house, but out of his sight, he will reject them completely. They will be cast off. Notice the comfort in the prophet’s words, “My God.” When others deny God, and when God denies them, it is a great comfort to faithful people that they can still say, “My God.” Though all may fall away, God is still mine.

Third, we see the result of this anger in the loss of their children. Ephraim once seemed likely to become very numerous. The name Ephraim means “fruitful,” and Jacob and Moses had spoken of his fruitfulness and strength (Genesis 41:51; Genesis 49:22; Deuteronomy 33:17). He seemed planted in a rich and pleasant place, like a tree by the water, to encourage growth. He was strong and rich, like Tyre, and also proud and secure.

But now their glory would fly away like a bird. Their children would be taken away, and the hopes of their families would be cut off. Their glory would soar off like an eagle, quickly and beyond recovery. Worldly glory is the kind that flies away. But those who have God as their glory have a lasting and unfading honor in him. Ephraim had once been like a fruitful tree, but now he was struck down and made bare. Their root was dried up, so they would bear no fruit. If the root dries up, the branch must wither.

God threatens this destruction of their children in a few ways. Some would die by his direct hand. They would “fly away from the birth, and from the womb, and from the conception.” Some would die as soon as they were born, so that the cradle would quickly become a coffin. Others would be stillborn, or the womb itself would become their grave, bringing sorrow and death to their mothers as well. Others still would be lost through miscarriage, almost as soon as they were conceived, like fruit that never comes to maturity.

See how easily God could, and how rightly we may say he might, wipe out the whole human race, that fallen, guilty, sinful race, and erase its name from under heaven. Here he shows this by what he does to Ephraim, making them all childless and causing all their honor to vanish from birth, womb, and conception. He dries up their root so they bear no fruit, and their work is finished in a few years.

They will also die by the hands of their enemies, violent deaths (Hosea 9:12). Even if they raise their children to full growth, and even if they escape the diseases and deaths that often strike infants, and seem to have brought them safely past danger, God says, “I will still take them away” (Hosea 9:12). By one judgment or another, there will be no man left to keep their families going and preserve their name. Again, Ephraim will bring forth children only to the murderer (Hosea 9:13). The mothers will suffer great pain in childbirth, and much care, labor, and cost will go into raising the children. Yet when a cruel enemy comes and kills young and old without mercy, it will seem as if they had only been fed like lambs for slaughter.

This should make parents humble. It is a hard thing in the joy of children to know that we do not know what we have brought them into the world for, perhaps to face the murderer, or, worse, to become the trouble of their own generation. The threat is repeated: “Though they bring forth children, yet I will slay even the beloved fruit of their womb” (Hosea 9:16). That means the children they love most. A parent’s love does not keep a child safe. Sometimes death is sent to take the cherished ones and leave behind those who are a burden.

When God sentenced Israel in the wilderness to die there, mercy was mixed with judgment, because their children were still allowed to enter the rest their unbelief had shut them out of. But here the rejection is complete and final. Even their children will be cut off, and the land will pass away for lack of heirs. The Chaldee paraphrase and many Jewish writers understood the “murderers” here to be those who sacrificed their children to Moloch, a sin that punished itself, showing that the parents had no compassion and were rightly left without blessings.

Those few who escape and remain will be scattered (Hosea 9:17). They will become wanderers among the nations. That is the condition of the Jews even now, with no place in the world where they remain a distinct nation.

The prophet also gives a prayer about this: “Give them, O Lord, what will you give?” (Hosea 9:14). What should he ask for a people already marked for destruction? He asks that, since the decree has gone out that they must either die in the womb or be born for the murderer, it would be better if they died in the womb. Better to have no children than to have children only to see them made miserable. In the same way, when total ruin was coming on the Jewish nation, Christ said, “Blessed are the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed” (Luke 23:29). So the prayer is, “Give them a womb that miscarries and dry breasts,” because it is better to fall into the hands of the Lord, whose mercies are great, than into the hands of man.

Those who are childless may comfort themselves with this truth, that there may come a time when, if they had children, they would wish they had not.