Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 9:11

"As for Ephraim, their glory shall fly away like a bird: there shall be no birth, and none with child, and no conception." — Hosea 9:11 (ASV)

As for Ephraim, their glory shall fly away, like a bird - Ephraim had parted with God, His true Glory. In turn, God would quickly take from him all created glory, all that he counted as glory, or in which he gloried. When a person parts with the substance, their true honor, God takes away the shadow, so that they might not content themselves with it and fail to see their shame, nor, by boasting themselves to be something, remain in the nothingness, poverty, and shame to which they had reduced themselves.

Fruitfulness, and consequent strength, had been God’s special promise to Ephraim. His name, Ephraim, contained within itself the promise of his future fruitfulness (Genesis 41:52). With this Jacob had blessed him. He was to be greater than Manasseh, his older brother, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations (Genesis 48:19). Moses had assigned to him tens of thousands (Deuteronomy 33:17), while to Manasseh he had promised thousands only.

On this blessing Ephraim had presumed, and had made it feed his pride; so now God, in His justice and mercy, would withdraw it from him. It should make itself wings, and fly away (Proverbs 23:5), with the swiftness of a bird, and like a bird, not to return again to the place from where it has been scared away.

From the birth - Their children were to perish at every stage in which they received life. This sentence pursued them back to the very beginning of life. First, when their parents should have joy in their birth, they were to come into the world only to go out of it; then, their mother's womb was to be itself their grave; then, stricken with barrenness, the womb itself was to refuse to conceive them.

“The glory of Ephraim passes away, from the birth, the womb, the conception, when the mind which previously was, on account of its glory, half-deified, receives, through the just judgment of God, ill report for good report, misery for glory, hatred for favor, contempt for reverence, loss for gain, famine for abundance. Act is the birth; intention the womb; thought the conception. The glory of Ephraim then flies away from the birth, the womb, the conception, when, in those who previously lived outwardly noble lives and gloried in themselves for the outward propriety of their lives, the acts are disgraced, the intention corrupted, and the thoughts defiled.”