Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 9:14

"Give them, O Jehovah-what wilt thou give? give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts." — Hosea 9:14 (ASV)

Give them a miscarrying womb — The prophet prays for Israel and debates with himself what he can ask for, amid this their determined wickedness and God’s judgments. Since Ephraim was to bring forth children to the murderer, then it was mercy to ask for them, that they might have no children. Since such are the evils that await their children, grant them, O Lord, as a blessing, the sorrows of barrenness. What God had before pronounced as a punishment should, when compared to other evils, be a mercy and an object of prayer.

So our Lord pronounces regarding the destruction of Jerusalem: Behold the days are coming, in which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps that never gave suck (Luke 23:29). “O unhappy fruitfulness and fruitful unhappiness, compared with which, barrenness, which among them was accounted a curse, became blessedness.”