Hosea 9:12

Though they bring up children - God had threatened to deprive them of children, in every stage before or at their birth. Now, beyond this, he tells them, as to those who should escape this sentence, he would bereave them of them, or make them childless.

That there shall not be a man left - Literally, “from man.” The brief word may be filled up, as the English Version has done (by not infrequent an idiom):

(1) “from there being a man;” or

(2) “from” among “men;” as Samuel said to Agag (1 Samuel 15:33; add Proverbs 30:14), “as thy sword has made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women;” or

(3) “from” becoming “men,” i. e., from reaching man’s estate.

The prophet, in any case, does not mcan absolute excision, for he says, “they shall be wanderers among the nations,” and had foretold, that they should abide, as they now are, and be converted in the end. But since their pride was in their numbers, he says, that these should be reduced in every stage from conception to ripened manhood. So God had forewarned Israel in the law, “If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law - ye shall be left few in number, whereas ye were as the stars of heaven for multitude” Deuteronomy 28:58, Deuteronomy 28:62. A sentence, felt the more by Ephraim, as being the head of the most powerful division of the people, and himself the largest portion of it.

Yea - (literally, “for”) woe also unto them, when I depart from them This is, at once, the ground and the completion of their misery, its beginning and its end. God’s departure was the source of all evil to them; as He foretold them, “I will forsake them, and I will hide My face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall befall them, so that they shall say in that day, Are not these evils come upon us, because our God is not among us?” Deuteronomy 31:17. But His departure was itself above all. For the prophet says also; “for woe also unto them.” This was the last step in the scale of misery. Beyond the loss of the children, whom they hoped or longed for, beyond the loss of their present might, and all their hope to come, there is a further undefined, unlimited, evil, “woe to them also,” when God should “withdraw,” not His care and providence only, but Himself also from them; “when I depart from them.” They had “departed” and turned away, from or “against” God (see the note at Hosea 7:13). It had been their characteristic Hosea 4:16. Now God Himself would requite them, as they had requited Him. He would depart from them. This is the last state of privation, which forms the “punishment of loss” in Hell. When the soul has lost God, what has it?