Hosea 1:8

We have here a prediction,

I. Of the rejection of Israel for a time, which is signified by the name of another child that Hosea had by his adulterous spouse, Hos 1:8, Hos 1:9. And still we must observe that those children whose names carried these direful omens in them to Israel were all children of whoredoms (Hos 1:2), all born of the harlot that Hosea married, to intimate that the ruin of Israel was the natural product of the sin of Israel. If they had not first revolted from God, they would never have been rejected by him; God never leaves any till they first leave him. Here is, 1. The birth of this child: When she had weaned her daughter, she conceived and bore a son. Notice is taken of the delay of the birth of this child, which was to carry in its name a certain presage of their utter rejection, to intimate God's patience with them, and his unwillingness to proceed to extremity. Some think that her bearing another son signifies that people's persisting in their wickedness; lust still conceived and brought forth sin. They added to do evil (so the Chaldee paraphrase expounds it); they were old in adulteries, and obstinate. 2. The name given him: Call him Lo-ammi - Not my people. When they were told that God would no more have mercy on them they regarded it not, but buoyed up themselves with this conceit, that they were God's people, whom he could not but have mercy on. And therefore he plucks that staff from under them, and disowns all relation to them: You are not my people, and I will not be your God. "I will not be yours (so the word it); I will be in no relation to you, will have nothing to do with you; I will not be your King, your Father, your patron and protector." We supply it very well with that which includes all, "I will not be your God; I will not be to you what I have been, nor what you vainly expect I should be, nor what I would have been if you had kept close to me." Observe, "You are not my people; you do not act as becomes my people; you are not observant of me and obedient to me, as my people should be; you are not my people, but the people of this and the other dunghill-deity; and therefore I will not own you for my people, will not protect you, will not put in any claim to you, not demand you, not deliver you out of the hands of those that have seized you; let them take you; you are none of mine. You will not have me to be your God, but pay your homage to the pretenders, and therefore I will not be your God; you shall have no interest in me, shall expect no benefit from me." Note, Our being taken into covenant with God is owing purely to him and to his grace, for then it begins on his side: I will be to them a God, and then they shall be to me a people; we love him because he first loved us. But our being cast out of covenant is owing purely to ourselves and our own folly. The breach is on man's side: You are not my people, and therefore I will not be your God; if God hate any, it is because they first hated him. This was fulfilled in Israel when they were utterly taken away into the land of Assyria, and their place knew them no more. They were no longer God's people, for they lost the knowledge and worship of him; no prophets were sent to them, no promises made to them, as were to the two tribes in their captivity; nay, they were no longer a people, but, for aught that appears, were mingled with the nations into which they were carried, and lost among them.

II. Of the reduction and restoration of Israel in the fulness of time. Here, as before, mercy is remembered in the midst of wrath; the rejection, as it shall not be total, so it shall not be final (Hos 1:10, Hos 1:11): Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea. See how the same hand that wounded is stretched forth to heal, and how tenderly he that has torn binds up; though God cause grief by his threatenings, yet he will have compassion, and will gather with everlasting kindness. They are very precious promises which are here made concerning the Israel of God, and which may be of use to us now.

1. Some think that these promises had their accomplishment in the return of the Jews out of their captivity in Babylon, when many of the ten tribes joined themselves to Judah, and took the benefit of the liberty which Cyrus proclaimed, came up in great numbers out of the several countries into which they were dispersed, to their own land, appointed Zerubbabel their head, and coalesced into one people, whereas before they had been two distinct nations. And in their own land, where God had by his prophets disowned and rejected them as none of his, he would by his prophets own them and appear for them as his children; and from all parts of the country they should come up to the temple to worship. And we have reason to think that, though this promise has a further reference, yet it was graciously intended and piously used for the support and comfort of the captives in Babylon, as giving them a general assurance of mercy which God had in store for them and their land; their nation could not be destroyed so long as this blessing was in it, was in reserve for it.

2. Some think that these promises will not have their accomplishment, at least not in full, till the general conversion of the Jews in the latter days, which is expected yet to come, when the vast incredible numbers of Jews, that are now dispersed as the sand of the sea, shall be brought to embrace the faith of Christ and be incorporated in the gospel-church. Then, and not till then, God will own them as his people, his children, even there where they had lain under the dismal tokens of their rejection. The Jewish doctors look upon this promise as not having had its accomplishment yet. But,

3. It is certain that this promise had its accomplishment in the setting up of the kingdom of Christ, by the preaching of the gospel, and the bringing in both of Jews and Gentiles to it, for to this these words are applied by St. Paul (Rom 9:25, Rom 9:26), and by St. Peter when he writes to the Jews of the dispersion, Pe1 2:10. Israel here is the gospel-church, the spiritual Israel (Gal 6:16), all believers who follow the steps, and inherit the blessing of faithful Abraham, who is the father of all that believe, whether Jews or Gentiles, Rom 4:11, Rom 4:12. Now let us see what is promised concerning this Israel.

(1.) That it shall greatly multiply, and the numbers of it be increased; it shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered. Though Israel according to the flesh be diminished and made few, the spiritual Israel shall be numerous, shall be innumerable. In the vast multitudes that by the preaching of the gospel have been brought to Christ, both in the first ages of Christianity and ever since, this promise is fulfilled, thousands out of every tribe in Israel, and out of other nations, a multitude which no man can number, Rev 7:4, Rev 7:9; Gal 4:27. In this the promise made to Abraham, when God called him Abraham the high father of a multitude, had its full accomplishment (Gen 17:5), and that Gen 22:17. Some observe that they are here compared to the sand of the sea, not only for their numbers, but as the sand of the sea serves for a boundary to the waters, that they shall not overflow the earth, so the Israelites indeed are a wall of defence to the places where they live, to keep off judgments. God can do nothing against Sodom while Lot is there.

(2.) That God will renew his covenant with the gospel-Israel, and will incorporate it a church to himself, by as full and ample a charter as that whereby the Old Testament church was incorporated; nay, and its privileges shall be much greater: "In the place where it was said unto them, You are not my people, there shall you be again admitted into covenant, and owned as my people." The abandoned Gentiles in their respective places, and the rejected Jews in theirs, shall be favoured and blessed. There, where the fathers were cast off for their unbelief, the children, upon their believing, shall be taken in. This is a blessed resurrection, the making of those the people of God that were not a people. Nay, but the privilege is enlarged; now it is not only, You are my people, as formerly, but You are the sons of the living God, whether by birth you were Jews or Gentiles. Israel under the law was God's son, his first-born, but then they were as children under age; now, under the gospel, they have grown up both to greater understanding and greater liberty, Gal 4:1, Gal 4:2. Note, [1.] It is the unspeakable privilege of all believers that they have the living God for their Father, the ever-living God, and may look upon themselves as his children by grace and adoption. [2.] The sonship of believers shall be owned and acknowledged; it shall be said to them, for their comfort and satisfaction, nay, and it shall be said for their honour in the hearing of the world, You are the sons of the living God. Let not the saints disquiet themselves; let not others despise them; for, sooner or later, there shall be a manifestation of the children of God, and all the world shall be made to know their excellency and the value God has for them. [3.] It will add much to their comfort, very much to their honour, when they are dignified with the tokens of God's favour in that very place where they had long lain under the tokens of his displeasure. This speaks comfort to the believing Gentiles, that they need not go up to Jerusalem, to be received and owned as God's children; no, they may stay where they are, and in that place, though it be in the remotest corner of the earth, in that place where they were at a distance, where it was said to them, "You are not God's people," but are separated from them (Isa 56:3, Isa 56:6), even there, without leaving their country and kindred, they may by faith receive the Spirit of adoption, witnessing with their spirits that "they are the children of God."

(3.) That those who had been at variance should be happily brought together (Hos 1:11): Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together. This uniting of Judah and Israel, those two kingdoms that were now so much at variance, biting and devouring one another, is mentioned only as a specimen, or one instance, of the happy effect of the setting up of Christ's kingdom in the world, the bringing of those that had been at the greatest enmity one against another to a good understanding one of another and a good affection one to another. This was literally fulfilled when the Galileans, who inhabited that part of the country which belonged to the ten tribes, and probably for the most part descended from them, so heartily joined with those that were probably called Jews (that were of Judea) in following Christ and embracing his gospel; and his first disciples were partly Jews and partly Galileans. The first that were blessed with the light of the gospel were of the land of Zebulun and Naphtali (Mat 4:15); and, though there was no good-will at all between the Jews and the Galileans, yet, upon their believing in Christ, they were happily consolidated, and there were no remains of the former disaffection they had to one another; nay, when the Samaritans believed, though between them and the Jews there was a much greater enmity, yet in Christ there was a perfect unanimity, Act 8:14. Thus Judah and Israel were gathered together; yet this was but a type of the much more celebrated coalition between Jews and Gentiles, when, by the death of Christ, the partition-wall of the ceremonial law was taken down. See Eph 2:14-16. Christ died, to gather together in one all the children of God that were scattered abroad, Joh 11:51; Eph 1:10.

(4.) That Jesus Christ should be the centre of unity to all God's spiritual Israel. They shall all agree to appoint to themselves one head, which can be no other than he whom God has appointed, even Christ. Note, Jesus Christ is the head of the church, the one only head of it, not only a head of government, as of the body politic, but a head of vital influence, as of the natural body. To believe in Christ is to appoint him to ourselves for our head, that is, to consent to God's appointment, and willingly commit ourselves to his guidance and government; and this in concurrence and communion with all good Christians that make him their head; so that, though they are many, yet in him they are one, and so become one with each other. Qui conveniunt in aliquo tertio inter se conveniunt - Those who agree with a third agree with each other.

(5.) That, having appointed Christ for their head, they shall come up out of the land; they shall come, some of all sorts, from all parts, to join themselves to the church, as, under the Jewish economy, they came up from all corners of the land of Israel to Jerusalem, to worship (Psa 122:4), Thither the tribes go up, to which there is a plain allusion in that prophecy of the accession of the Gentiles to the church (Isa 2:3), Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord. It denotes not a local remove (for they are said to be in the same place, Hos 1:10), but a change of their mind, a spiritual ascent to Christ. They shall come up from the earth (so it may be read); for those who have given up themselves to Christ as their head take their affections off from this earth, and the things of it, to set them upon things above (Col 3:1, Col 3:2); for they are not of the world (Joh 15:19), but have their conversation in heaven. They shall come up out of the land, though it be the land of their nativity; they shall, in affection, come out from it, that they may follow the Lamb withersoever he goes. Thus the learned Dr. Pocock takes it.

(6.) That, when all this comes to pass, great shall be the day of Jezreel. Though great is the day of Jezreel's affliction (so some understand it), yet great shall be the day of Jezreel's glory. This shall be Israel's day; the day shall be their own, after their enemies have long had their day. Israel is here called Jezreel, the seed of God, the holy seed (Isa 6:13), the substance of the land. This seed is now sown in the earth, and buried under the clods; but great shall be its day when the harvest comes. Great was the church's day when there were added to it daily such as should be saved; then did the Almighty do great things for it.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Hos 1:8 Now when she had weaned Loruhamah, she conceived, and bare a son.

Ver. 8. Now when she had weaned Loruhamah] That is, after that the patience of God had waited and long looked for their conversion; but all in vain, he resolved upon their utter rejection. And first he sent for his love tokens back again: he weans them and takes them off from those "breasts of consolation," Isa 66:11, the holy ordinances, deprived them of those dugs (better than wine, Son 1:4) that they had despised, carried them far away from that good land that abounded with milk and honey: the men of the East should be sent in upon them "to eat their fruit and drink their milk," Eze 25:4. "This nation" (saith a divine) "is sick with a spiritual pleurisy: we begin to surfeit on the bread of life, the unadulterated milk of God’s word, and to spill it. Now when God seeth his mercies lying under the table, it is just with him to call to the enemy to take away." Say not here, with those in the Gospel threatened with this judgment, "God forbid," Luk 20:16. Think it not a thing impossible that England should be thus visited. The sea is not so calm in summer, but it may be troubled with a storm: the mountain so firm, but may be moved with an earthquake. We have seen as fair suns as ours fall from the midst of heaven, for our instance, Lege historiam, ne fias historia. Read history lest you become history! Surely, except we repent and reform a little better than we have done yet, a removal of our candlestick, a total eclipse of our sun, may be as certainly foreseen and foretold, as if visions and letters were sent us from heaven, as once to the seven Churches of Asia, who sinned away their light, &c.

And bare a son] Not a daughter, as before, but a son, because under Hosea, the last king of Israel, that kingdom began a little to lift up the head, and to stand it out against the Assyrian. But this was but extremus nisus regni, the last sprunting of that dying state. For soon after, Samaria, the chief city, was closely besieged: and although it held out three whole years, with a masculine resolution, yet at length it was sacked, and all the people of the land carried captive, young and old, naked and barefoot, even with their buttocks uncovered, &c., as it is said of their confederates the Egyptians, Isa 20:4, and as it shall be done at length to that purple whore of Rome, who shall be stripped naked, broiled, and eaten, Rev 17:16. A cold sweat stands already upon her limbs: and, for a presage of her future ruin, it is observed that Rome, since it became Papal, was never besieged by any but it was taken. As for their late masculine attempts and achievements (if any), it is but as here in the kingdom of Israel, a lightning before death, as the blaze of a candle a little before it goes out, the bulging of a wall that is ready to come down, or as it was said of Carthage a little before it was taken, Morientium bestiarum violentiores esse morsus, dying beasts bite cruelly.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Hos 1:8. Now when she had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she conceived, &c. — The last child is a son, and the daughter was weaned before the woman conceived him. “A child, when it is weaned,” says St. Jerome, “leaves the mother; is not nourished with the parent’s milk; is sustained with extraneous ailments.” “This aptly represents the condition of the ten tribes, expelled from their own country, dispersed in foreign lands, no longer nourished with the spiritual food of divine truth by the ministry of the prophets, and destitute of any better guide than natural reason and heathen philosophy. The deportation of the ten tribes, by which they were reduced to this miserable condition, and deprived of what remained to them, in their worst state, of the spiritual privileges of the chosen race, was, in St. Jerome’s notion of the prophecy, the weaning of Lo-ruhamah. The child, conceived after Lo-ruhamah was thus weaned, must typify the people of the kingdom of Judah, in the subsequent periods of their history. Or rather, this child typifies the whole nation of the children of Israel, reduced, in its external form, by the captivity of the ten tribes, to that single kingdom. The sex represents a considerable degree of national strength and vigour, remaining in this branch of the Jewish people, very different from the exhausted state of the other kingdom previous to its fall. Nor have the two tribes ever suffered so total an excision. The ten were absolutely lost in the world soon after their captivity. They have been nowhere to be found for many ages, and know not where to find themselves; though we are assured they will be found of God, in the day when he shall make up his jewels. But the people of Judah have never ceased totally to be. In captivity at Babylon they lived a separate race, respected by their conquerors. From that captivity they returned. They became an opulent and powerful state; formidable at times to the rival powers of Syria and Egypt; and held in no small consideration by the Roman people, and the first emperors of Rome. And even in their present state of ruin and degradation, without territory, and without a polity of their own, such is the masculine strength of suffering with which they are endued, they are still extant in the world as a separate race, but not as God’s people, otherwise than as they are reserved for signal mercy. God grant it may be in no very distant period! But at present they are לא עמי, Lo-ammi, not my people. And so they have actually been more than seventeen centuries and a half; and to this condition they were condemned, when this prophecy was delivered. That these are typified by the child Lo-ammi, appears from the application of that name, in the tenth verse, to the children of Israel generally; whence it seems to follow, that the degenerate people of Judah were implicated in the threatenings contained in the former part of the chapter. But in those threatenings they cannot be implicated, unless they are typified in some one, or more, of the typical children. But they are not typified in Jezreel; for the Jezreel is no object of wrath or threatening: not in Lo-ruhamah; for Lo-ruhamah typifies the kingdom of the ten tribes exclusively: of necessity, therefore, in Lo-ammi.” — Bishop Horsley.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

weaned--said to complete the symbolical picture, not having any special signification as to Israel [HENDERSON]. Israel was bereft of all the privileges which were as needful to them as milk is to infants (compare Psa 131:2; Pe1 2:2) [VATABLUS]. Israel was not suddenly, but gradually cast off; God bore with them with long-suffering, until they were incurable [CALVIN]. But as it is not God, but Gomer who weans Lo-ruhamah, the weaning may imply the lust of Gomer, who was hardly weaned when she is again pregnant [MANGER].

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

The weaning the Prophet mentions here is by some understood allegorically; as though he said, that the people would for a time be deprived of prophecies, and of the priesthood, and of other spiritual gifts: but this is frigid. The Prophet here, I have no doubt, sets forth the patience of God towards that people. The Lord then, before he had utterly cast away the Israelites, waited patiently for their repentance, if, indeed, there was any hope for it; but when he found them to be ever like themselves, he then at length proceeded to the last punishment. Hence Hosea says, that the daughter, who was the second child, was weaned; as though he said, that the people of Israel had not been suddenly cast away, for God had with long patience borne with them, and thus suspended heavier judgement, until, having found their wickedness to be unhealable, he at length commenced what follows, Call the third child Lo-ammi.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

8, 9. The birth of a Son

Lo-ammi] i.e. not my people. Observe the climax in the names. ‘Jezreel’ announces the judgement; Lo-ruhamah, the withdrawal of Jehovah’s affection; Lo-ammi, the treatment of Israel as a foreign people.

I will not be your God] Lit., ‘I will not be for (or, to) you’, i.e. perhaps, ‘on your side’ (comp. Psa_56:10; Psa_118:6; Psa_124:1-2), or, as Prof. Robertson Smith[54], ‘I am no longer Ehyeh’, alluding to Exo_3:14, ‘And God said unto Moses, I will be that which I will be (viz. what I have promised and you look for); and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I will be (Ehyeh) hath sent me unto you’. According to this view, Ehyeh is equivalent to Yihyeh or whatever is a more correct form of the name miswritten Jehovah—the revealed name of Israel’s God, and Hos_1:9 is the earliest witness to the true meaning of Exo_3:14. ‘I am no longer Ehyeh for you’ will thus be a contrast to ‘I will save Judah as the Lord (Yahveh = Yihyeh) their God’ (Hos_1:7). It is however doubtful whether Hosea shews acquaintance elsewhere with the document to which Exo_3:14 belongs, and at any rate it is more natural to suppose, as A. V. (after Yefet the Karaite) has done that lçlôhîm ‘(for) God’ has dropped out of the text.

[54] British and Foreign Evangelical Review, Jan. 1876, pp. 153–165.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Now when she had weaned Loruhamah,.... That is, when Gomer had weaned her daughter of this name, Hos 1:6. This some interpret of the people of Israel being deprived of the word and ordinances, compared to milk and breasts, having a famine of them; and so were like children weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts; though others think this is expressive of the patience of God in bearing with this people, after he had before threatened them with the subversion of their kingdom and state; and even after the prophecy had took place in part, in causing the kingdom to cease in the house of Jehu, he bore with them about forty years before they were entirely carried captive; suckling and weaning, before the conception and birth of another child, denoting some stop and stay; but rather this intends the taking away some part of the land of Israel, as a child when weaning is taken away from its mother; and may respect the carrying captive many of the Israelites in divers parts, particularly out of Gilead, Galilee, and Naphtali, by Tiglathpileser king of Assyria, Kg2 15:29. This cannot be understood of the captivity of the Jews in Babylon, as Cocceius; for this is a resumption and continuation of the prophecy concerning the ten tribes, after inserting a promise of the salvation of Judah, in the preceding verse:

she conceived and bare a son: according to Kimchi, as the weaning of Loruhamah points at the times of weakness, from Zachariah the son of Jeroboam to the times of Pekahiah, when the reigns were short and troublesome; so this son conceived and born represents the state of the nation in the times of Pekah; who reigned twenty years, and was too powerful for the kingdom of Judah, slew multitudes of them, and carried others captive, and assisted Rezin king of Syria against Ahaz king of Judah: but, according to the series of the prophecy, it seems best to agree with the times of Hoshea king of Israel, who was not so bad as some of his predecessors; was a man of spirit and courage; cast off the Assyrian yoke, and neglected to give presents to the king of Assyria; and Samaria in his time held out a three years' siege against that king, Kg2 17:1. The Targum is,

"and the generation of them who are carried captive among the nations are found not to have obtained mercy by their works, but they added and did evil works.''

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Now when she had weaned ... - Eastern women very commonly nursed their children two, or even three (2 Macc. 7:27) years. The weaning then of the child portrays a certain interval of time between these two degrees of chastisement; but after this reprieve, the last and final judgment pictured here was to set in irreversibly.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Though some wrest the words to an allegorical sense, I think the prophet keeps the decorum in the similitude, and therefore, as women ordinarily conceive not whilst they give suck, so this Gomer weaned her daughter ere she conceived the son which is to be an emblem of the final rejection of the ten tribes.

Bare a son, to be a third sign to this incorrigible and self-undoing kingdom.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

8, 9. Birth of Lo-ammi.

8. The third child was a son.

When she had weaned — After two or three years, the length of time allowed to elapse in Palestine even now before children are weaned. 9.

Lo-ammi — That is, Not my people. Israel is to be cast off entirely, to be no longer the people of Jehovah. The three names form a climax — Jezreel symbolizes a definite judgment; Lo-ruhamah, the withdrawal of the divine mercy; Lo-ammi, the utter rejection of Israel, its treatment as a foreign nation.

I will not be your God — Literally, I will not be for you, that is, on your side, to help you. The thought remains the same, but the ordinary translation brings it out more strongly. Some manuscripts of the LXX. read “your God,” and this is favored by Hos_2:3 (compare Zec_8:8). Perhaps the text has suffered in transmission.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Now when she had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she conceived, and bare a son. As Eastern mothers nurse their children some two or three years, the process of weaning at the end of that period would imply a corresponding interval. This may be merely an incident to complete the prophetic declaration, and pleasingly vary the narrative. It is rather, we think, a pause in the progress of the approaching calamity a pause indicative of the Divine lothness to execute the final sentence. Or the weaning may be referred, with some, to the entire withdrawal of all spiritual nourishment and support, when promise and prophecy, instruction and consolation, symbol and sacrifice, would be abolished.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

"And she weaned Unfavoured, and conceived, and bare a son. And He said, Call his name Not-my-people; for ye are not my people, and I will not be yours." If weaning is mentioned not merely for the sake of varying the expression, but with a deliberate meaning, it certainly cannot indicate the continued patience of God with the rebellious nation, as Calvin supposes, but rather implies the uninterrupted succession of the calamities set forth by the names of the children. As soon as the Lord ceases to compassionate the rebellious tribes, the state of rejection ensues, so that they are no longer "my people," and Jehovah belongs to them no more. In the last clause, the words pass with emphasis into the second person, or direct address, "I will not be to you," i.e., will no more belong to you (cf. Psa 118:6; Exo 19:5; Eze 16:8). We need not supply 'Elohim here, and we may not weaken לא אהיה לכם into "no more help you, or come to your aid." For the fulfilment, see Kg2 17:18.

Keil & Delitzsch — Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1861–1891) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API. (Old Testament only.)

Lo-Ruhamah

This name means "no mercy." The translator may choose to represent this meaning as the name. See how you translated this in Hosea 1:6. AT: "No Mercy" (See: How to Translate Names)

Lo-Ammi

This name means "not my people." The translator may choose to represent this meaning as the name. AT: "Not My People" (See: How to Translate Names)

translationWords

son

Yahweh

name

people of God

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

And she weaned Lo ruhamah According to the Targum, we explain: And that generation shall perish among the nations where they were exiled.

and she conceived and bore a son According to the Targum: And they continued and committed evil deeds. But according to its simple meaning, we explain it as it apparently means.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.