Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 9:6

"For, lo, they are gone away from destruction; [yet] Egypt shall gather them up, Memphis shall bury them; their pleasant things of silver, nettles shall possess them; thorns shall be in their tents." — Hosea 9:6 (ASV)

For behold, they are gone because of destruction - They had fled, for fear of destruction, to destruction. For fear of the destruction from Assyria, they had fled away and gone to Egypt, hoping, undoubtedly, to find some temporary refuge there until the Assyrian invasion had swept by. But, as befalls those who flee from God, they fell into more certain destruction.

Egypt shall gather them up, Memphis shall bury them - They had fled singly, in making their escape from the Assyrian. Egypt shall receive them, and shall gather them together, but only to one common burial, so that none should escape. So Jeremiah says, They shall not be gathered nor buried (Jeremiah 8:2); and Ezekiel, Thou shalt not be brought together, nor gathered (Ezekiel 29:5). “Memphis” is the Greek name for the Egyptian “Mamphta,” from where the Hebrew “Moph” comes; or “Manuph,” from where the Hebrew “Noph” comes (Isaiah 19:13; Jeremiah 2:16; Jeremiah 44:1; Jeremiah 46:14; Ezekiel 30:13 and following). It was at this time the capital of Egypt, whose idols God threatens. Its name, “the dwelling of Phta,” the Greek Vulcan, marked it as a seat of idolatry; and in it was the celebrated court of Apis, the original of Jeroboam’s calf. There, in the home of the idol for whom they forsook their God, they would be gathered for burial.

It was reputed to be the burial place of Osiris and was therefore a favorite burial place of the Egyptians. It once embraced a circuit of almost 19 miles, with magnificent buildings; it declined after the building of Alexandria; its very ruins gradually perished after Cairo rose in its neighborhood.

The pleasant places for their silver, nettles shall possess them - The English margin gives the same sense in different words: “Their silver shall be desired (as Obadiah says, his hidden treasures were searched out); nettles shall inherit them” (Obadiah 1:6). In either way, it is a picture of utter desolation. The long, rank grass or the nettle, waving amid human habitations, looks all the sadder, as signifying that humans once were there, and are gone. The desolate house looks like the grave of the departed. According to either rendering, the silver which they once had treasured was gone. As they had “inherited” and “driven out” (the word is one) the nations whose land God had given them, so now nettles and thorns would “inherit them.” These would be the only tenants of their treasure houses and their dwellings.