Hosea 1:9

Then said God, call his name Loammi,.... Which Aben Ezra interprets of the children of the ten tribes horn in captivity, who never returned; but it rather signifies the ten tribes themselves, who

Then said God, Call his name Loammi: for ye are not my people, and I will not be your God.

Then said God to the prophet, as before, ,6. Call his name; the name of his new-born son, the sign or type of the ten tribes, who had rejected God, and would not be reclaimed. Lo-ammi, Not my people; though once you were a peculiar people, you are so no more in my account, you are cast off as you deserved. For ye; the whole house of apostate Israel, who first cast off the house of David and my temple, and at last rejected me, that I should not be your God. Are not my people; though circumcised, . yet have you cast off my covenant, you neither worship me, nor come up to my temple, nor keep my law; Baal, the calves, and the idols of your neighbours are your gods; ye are their people: ye are neither mine as to the civil constitution, you made you kings, and I knew it not, , without my leave or liking; nor as to church constitution are ye mine, for your whole worship is the politic contrivance of Jeroboam the son of Nebat. You have forgotten your Maker, and build temples, : ye count the great things of my law strange things to you; I must count you strangers to me. I will not be your God, to protect you against dangers and enemies, or to replenish you with blessings, the fruits of my wonted goodness, or to pity you when you do either want or smart, or to counsel you in difficulties, or to hear your cries, or pardon your sins, or accept an offering at your hand; as you have long and lang refused me, and I have tried all ways to prevent your final self-undoing obstinacy, so now I do for ever reject you, O house of Israel, and will be a God to you no more than to any of the heathen nations. This God executed when he gave them up into the hands of Shalmaneser, who sent them where none now can find them; they are lost to men, they know not where they are; they are lost to God, he loves not nor careth for them.

Hosea 1:9 Then said [God], Call his name Loammi: for ye [are] not my people, and I will not be your [God].Ver. 9. Call his name Loammi] Nomen extremum et deploratum, saith Pareus, the last and most lamentable name of all, containing a most heavy, but spiritual, and therefore less sensible, punishment, viz. an utter abjection and abdication from the covenant, from grace, from God, from life eternal. For ye are not my people] But, being totally cashiered, and discovenanted; "Are ye not as the children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel, saith the Lord? Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?" Amos 9:7 : q.d. True it is, I have brought you up out of Egypt (and therein you greatly glory), but have I not done as much as all this for those profane nations here mentioned? with and among whom, hence forward I shall reckon you, for you are no people of mine, but discarded, and dispeopled. Till the covenant made with Abraham, all nations were suffered to walk in their own ways, Acts 14:16, as fishes pass at liberty through the paths of the seas, Psalms 8:8. One person was no more respected than another. But as soon as it was said, I will be thy God, and the God of thy seed after thee, the Church became as fish cast into a pond for peculiar use, and was divided from other nations no otherwise than light was from darkness in the first creation, or than Goshen was from Egypt in that wonderful separation. But here God seems to rescind his own act, to cast off the people of his purchase, and utterly to disown them; as once before he also did, when he fathered them upon Moses, saying, "Thy people, which thou hast brought out of Egypt," &c., Exodus 32:7. But this (we must know) is no other than mutatio rei non Dei, effectus non affectus, facti non consilii, not a change of God’ s will, but only of his works. "For hath God indeed cast away his people? God forbid. God hath not cast away his people, whom he foreknew," Romans 11:1-2. "Thus saith the Lord God, If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel, for all that they have done, saith the Lord," Jeremiah 31:37. And albeit (by an angry aposiopesis) he says here, "I will not be your God" (the word "God" is not in the original, ab irate omittitur, it is omited from anger, saith Mercer), yet to show that he is Baal Chemah, One that can rule his wrath, as Nahum 1:2, he subjoineth here, Hosea 1:10,

(9) Closes the chapter in the Hebrew text. The episode above described is, in some particulars, the model for Ezekiel 16. Gomer’s child Lo ‘Ammi (not my people), is type of utter and final repudiation.

Verse 9. Call his name Lo-ammi] לא עמי Lo-ammi, "Not my people;" for which the reason is immediately given: Ye are not my people, and I will not be your God.] The word GOD is not added here by any of the ancient versions or MSS.; and yet the construction absolutely requires it, as Houbigant properly observes, who thinks the present reading לא אהיה לכם lo eheyeh lachem, "I will not be to you," a corruption of the word אלחיכם eloheychem, "your God." It is strange that no various reading occurs on this verse in any MS. yet discovered. In two of the oldest of mine there is a blank of half a line left after the last word; and so it is in the Masoretic Bibles, though the sense is not complete; for it is evidently continued in the following verse. Probably God refers to the words, Exodus 3:14: אהיה אשר אהיה I am that I am. I am, אהיה eheyeh, - I shall be, hath sent me unto you. I will not be your eheyeh, i.e., I will not be your God.

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. Psalms 56:10; Psalms 118:6; Psalms 124:1-2), or, as Prof. Robertson Smith[54], ‘I am no longer Ehyeh’, alluding to Exodus 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 Hosea 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’ (Hosea 1:7). It is however doubtful whether Hosea shews acquaintance elsewhere with the document to which Exodus 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.

Call his name Lo-ammi - that is, “not My people.” The name of this third child expresses the last final degree of chastisement.

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.