Hosea 9:6

For, lo, they are gone, because of destruction,.... That is, many of the people of Israel were gone out of their own land to others, particularly to Egypt, because of the destruction that was coming

For, lo, they are gone because of destruction: Egypt shall gather them up, Memphis shall bury them: the pleasant places for their silver, nettles shall possess them: thorns shall be in their tabernacles.

For, lo; mark it well, and observe the event. They are gone because of destruction; some of the wary and timorous are already withdrawn from the desolation that cometh on their country, and more will flee from the Assyrian invader; and it is very near, and very uncertain, expressed therefore in the perfect tense. Egypt shall gather them up; in Egypt they hope to be quiet, and survive these desolations, and to return into their own land; but they shall die in Egypt, and Egyptians shall lay them out, and prepare them to their grave. So this phrase, . Memphis, which elsewhere is called Noph, , a very greatly traded city in those days, and at this day also known by the name which speaks its greatness, Grand Cairo. Shall bury them: many of the ten tribes, fleeing their own wasted country, did no doubt remove so far as Memphis, partly for safety, that they might be out of the Assyrian’ s reach, but more principally for convenience of a trade, that they might at least get a livelihood, if not grow rich on their trade; there many of these fugitives died; and perhaps by the pestilence (which is a disease that frequently sweeps that city) multitudes of them might be swept away into their graves in and about that city. The pleasant places for their silver; their beautiful and strong houses built for keeping their wealth in. Nettles shall possess them; they shall be ruined, and lie long in rubbish, till nettles grow up in them. Thorns, or briers, or whatever (one kind for all) worthless and hurtful shrubs used to grow in perpetuated desolations, shall be in their tabernacles, in their dwellingplaces, their houses, which here retain the name of their ancient habitations when they dwelt in tents.

Hosea 9:6 For, lo, they are gone because of destruction: Egypt shall gather them up, Memphis shall bury them: the pleasant [places] for their silver, nettles shall possess them: thorns [shall be] in their tabernacles.Ver. 6. For, lo, they are gone because of destruction] They are gone either into Egypt for refuge, or into the state of the dead, they are gone out of the world ( abierunt, i.e. obierunt). They shall perish by destruction, so some render it. When God had said in the former verse, "What will ye do," they should have fallen down before him and said, "What wilt thou have us to do, Lord?" we know not what at all to do, but our eyes are toward thee. This had been right, and thus they might have disarmed God’ s indignation; but they had other carnal shifts, and thought they could tell well enough what to do, and whither to go; whereupon they were so fully bent, that the prophet here reports them gone already. "For, lo, they are gone," and got to Egypt; as various of them did doubtless during the siege, and after the sack of Samaria, when they were forced to shift for themselves as they could: but did they so "escape by iniquity. In thine anger cast down the people, O God," saith David; and it is not more a prayer than a prophecy, Psalms 56:7, and this people had the proof of it. Egypt shall gather them] Either for punishment or for burial, as Ezekiel 29:5 Jeremiah 8:2, so that they fled but out of the smoke into the fire; and in running from death they ran to it; as the historian saith of those poor Scots at Musselborough Field, who, running for their lives, so strained themselves in their race, that they fell down breathless and dead. Memphis shall bury them] Lest they should please themselves with vain hopes of return to their country, he shows that that shall never be; but they shall lay their bones in a strange land. Memphis (anciently called Noph, Isaiah 19:13, or (as some will), No, Nahum 3:8, at this day Grand Cairo, famous for the pyramids and the kings’ sepulchres), Memphis, I say, a principal city of Egypt, shall be a Kibrothhattaavah to you, a place of sepulchres; especially then when Nebuchadnezzar, sent by God (who giveth him Egypt as his pay for his pains at Tyre), shall come and smite that land, and deliver such as are for death to death, and such as are for the sword to the sword, Jeremiah 43:11. The pleasant places for themselves, nettles shall possess them] Heb. shall possess them as their inheritance; so that the Israelites nor their heirs shall ever repossess these pleasant places for their silver, i.e. where they either laid up their silver (their repositories or countinghouses), or where they laid out their silver, either in costly buildings and sumptuous furniture, or else in idols and statues placed therein, to their no small charge and delight.

(6) Translate, Behold if they have gone from the desolation (i.e., Palestine laid waste by the invader), Egypt shall gather them, Memphis bury them—Memphis, the vast city and necropolis of Ptah, where Apis and Ibis, kings and men, lay by thousands mummied, the religious shrine of Egyptian faith in the under-world, from which Israel had been emancipated at the Exodus.—There is a longing for their silver (i.e., they shall long for the silver left behind concealed in their desolate land.—The thistle shall possess them, the thorn shall be in their tents. Hosea prophesies an exile to Egypt after the anticipated invasion. That many exiles took refuge in Egypt in 721 B.C., after the great overthrow of the northern kingdom (as in the case of Judah in the days of Jeremiah), cannot admit of doubt. (Comp. Hosea 8:13 and Hosea 9:3 above; see Hosea 11:5, Note.)

Verse 6. For, lo, they are gone] Many of them fled to Egypt to avoid the destruction; but they went there only to die. Memphis] Now Cairo, or Kahira, found them graves. The pleasant places for their silver] The fine estates or villas which they had purchased by their money, being now neglected and uninhabited, are covered with nettles; and even in their tabernacles, thorns and brambles of different kinds grow. These are the fullest marks of utter desolation.

6. Hosea ‘in the Spirit’ sees the Israelites already being carried into captivity. because of destruction] Rather, from the devastation. They have left their desolated country. shall gather them up] viz. in burial; comp. Ezekiel 29:5; Jeremiah 8:2; Jeremiah 25:33. Memphis] The most ancient of the capitals of Egypt, on the west bank of the Nile, south of old Cairo, elsewhere called in the Hebrew Noph (Isaiah 19:13; Jeremiah 2:16), but here Moph. The Egyptian name, given to it by Menes, accounts for both forms—Men-nufre ‘the good’ or ‘perfect mansion’; the Assyrians called it Mimpi. All that is left of Memphis is its necropolis ‘stretching north and south nearly twenty miles’, where Hosea threateningly declares that the Israelites shall find a grave, remote, dishonoured, and ‘unclean.’ Contrast Exodus 14:11, where the Israelites reproach Moses with having deprived them of their right to sepulture in the vast cemeteries of Egypt. the pleasant places for their silver] Rather, their precious things of silver, i.e. costly silver ornaments. their tabernacles] i.e., either the idol-tents of the high places (comp. Ezekiel 16:16), or simply their dwellings (comp. 2 Samuel 20:1).

For lo, they are gone because of destruction - They had fled, for fear of destruction, to destruction.

6. Already the prophet sees the people leaving the land of Jehovah to experience the deprivations of the exile pictured in Hosea 9:4-5. They are gone — The prophetic perfect in Hebrew.