Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 9:12

"Though they bring up their children, yet will I bereave them, so that not a man shall be left: yea, woe also to them when I depart from them!" — Hosea 9:12 (ASV)

Though they bring up children - God had threatened to deprive them of children, in every stage before or at their birth. Now, beyond this, He tells them, concerning those who would escape this sentence, that He would bereave them of their children, or make them childless.

That there shall not be a man left - Literally, “from man.” The brief word may be filled in, as the English Version has done (by a not infrequent idiom):

1. “from there being a man;” or
2. “from” among “men;” as Samuel said to Agag (1 Samuel 15:33), “as thy sword has made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women;” or
3. “from” becoming “men,” i.e., from reaching man’s estate.

The prophet, in any case, does not mean absolute excision, for he says, “they shall be wanderers among the nations,” and had foretold that they should abide, as they now are, and be converted in the end. But since their pride was in their numbers, he says, that these should be reduced in every stage from conception to ripened manhood. So God had forewarned Israel in the law, “If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law - ye shall be left few in number, whereas ye were as the stars of heaven for multitude” (Deuteronomy 28:58, Deuteronomy 28:62). A sentence felt all the more by Ephraim, as being the head of the most powerful division of the people, and himself the largest portion of it.

Yea - (literally, “for”) woe also to them, when I depart from them. This is, at once, the ground and the completion of their misery, its beginning and its end. God’s departure was the source of all evil to them; as He foretold them, “I will forsake them, and I will hide My face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall befall them, so that they shall say in that day, Are not these evils come upon us, because our God is not among us?” (Deuteronomy 31:17). But His departure was itself above all.

For the prophet also says, “for woe also to them.” This was the last step in the scale of misery. Beyond the loss of the children for whom they hoped or longed, beyond the loss of their present might and all their future hope, there is a further undefined, unlimited evil: “woe to them also.” This occurs when God should “withdraw” not only His care and providence but Himself also from them— “when I depart from them.”

They had “departed” and turned away from or “against” God (see the note at Hosea 7:13). This had been their characteristic (Hosea 4:16). Now God Himself would repay them as they had repaid Him. He would depart from them.

This is the last state of privation, which forms the “punishment of loss” in Hell. When the soul has lost God, what has it?