Hosea 2:4

And I will not have mercy upon her children,.... The posterity of the Jews in succeeding ages, until the time of their conversion comes; they persisting in the sins of their forefathers, filling up

And I will not have mercy upon her children; for they be the children of whoredoms.

I will not have mercy: see . Upon her children: by this expression particular persons are severally, as by mother the whole nation was, threatened, that none might flatter themselves with hope of better: it is observable they are called her children, not God’ s. For they be the children of whoredoms; born in whoredom, and, like the mother, addicted to whoredom; as if God had said, They are none of mine by birth, nor any whit like me in disposition, but a spurious and hateful brood, and as such I will use them.

Hosea 2:4 And I will not have mercy upon her children; for they [be] the children of whoredoms.Ver. 4. And I will not have mercy upon her children] Lo, here another "and" to those four before; and more dreadful than the rest. Like as that in Jeremiah 16:13, where "I will not show you favour," was worse to them than their captivity in a strange country. Say that God do cast off his people, yet if he say, "they shall be as if I had not cast them off, and will hear them," Zechariah 10:6, the affliction is nothing so great as when he sends an evil, an only evll without mixture of mercy, as here, Ezekiel 7:5. Oh, this pure wrath, this judgment without mercy, must needs be very heavy: when it is once grown to hatred, there is little hope: Hosea 9:15, "All their wickedness is in Gilgal, for there I hated them." God is not of himself μισανθρωπος, a hater of mankind, but the contrary, φιλανθρωπος, Titus 3:4. But such is the venomous nature of sin, and so contrary is it to God’ s both holy nature and just law, that he cannot but hate it in whomsoever he finds it: yet with thin difference, that he pities it rather in his saints, and hates it in his enemies: as we hate poison in a toad, but we pity it in a man; because in the one it is their nature, in the other their disease. And as revenge is the next effect of hatred, wicked men may expect no better dealing from God than a man would afford to his stubborn enemy. Pharaoh had plague upon plague: neither did the Lord leave him till he had dashed the breath out of his body: so true is that of the Psalmist, "With the froward thou wilt wrestle," Psalms 18:26, and that of Solomon, "The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways," Proverbs 14:14. He hath made a match with mischief, he shall have his belly full of it. He would needs have his own way, and had it ("for I would have purged him, but he would not be purged"). Now I will have my way another while: "for thou shalt not be purged from thy filthiness any more, till I have caused my fury to rest upon thee," Ezekiel 24:13.

(4) Her children.—The children are like their mother: not only are they born of doubtful parentage, but are personally defiled. Not only is idolatry enshrined in the national sanctuary and the royal palace, but the people love to have it so. They endorse the degradation of their mother.

Verse 4. They be the children of whoredoms.] They are all idolaters; and have been consecrated to idols, whose marks they bear.

4. And upon her children …] No bar shall be opposed, Jehovah declares, to the natural consequence of a corrupt and corrupting religion. Israel, as an independent nation, must at least for a time cease to be. It appears then that the appeal in Hosea 2:4 was uttered as a forlorn hope. All but a few of the Israelites were too far gone to desire to cooperate in a reformation. They were the ‘children of whoredom’, not merely as the children of idolaters, but as idolaters themselves.

I will not have mercy upon her children - God visits the sins of the parents upon the children, until the entailed curse be cut off by repentance.