The Lord Will Punish Israel
Give them, O LORD: what wilt thou give? give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts. Hos. 9:14
what wilt thou... Question 5. Next, Hos. 10:3.
give them a... This is the prayerful answer to the question here: a miscarrying womb and dry breasts. The prophet here speaks as one greatly agitated, and at a loss what to say upon what he had just heard; but at last, concludes with beseeching God rather to let the women be barren, or miscarry. Or, if they brought forth children and have no milk in their breasts to give them, that they might die soon after their birth. Rather than that they should grow up to be slain by their enemies before their parents’ eyes. Or carried into captivity; or as it is expressed in the foregoing verse, that their parents should be driven to the hard necessity of bringing them forth for the murderer.
give them a... The days are coming when the barren womb will be a blessing; give this, O Lord; it is less misery to have none, than to have all our children murdered by a barbarous enemy (Luke 23:29).
and dry breasts... Not to starve the children born, but it is a further explication of the former; dry breasts are symptoms of a barren womb, whether by abortion or non-conception, by one or other. Prevent these woeful effects of our enemies’ unjust rage, and of thy most righteous displeasure against us, O Lord.
When God removes from the people, the blessing of the womb removes, as well. One of the blessings God had promised, if they followed after Him, was to bless the fruit of their womb. When God removed His blessing, the womb was cursed. The mothers did not carry healthy children to full term but lost the children to miscarriage.
And the prophet interrupts with his chorus: Give them, O Lord-what wilt Thou give them? Give them a miscarrying womb and breasts that are dry!
The RSV (following the LXX) translates Hos. 9:13, Ephraim’s sons, as I have seen, are destined for a prey. This seems to provide better parallelism with Hos. 9:13.
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