What Does Hosea 9:14 Mean?
Give them, O LORD. What will you give? Give them a childless womb and dry breasts.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Give them, O LORD: what wilt thou give? give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts.THE KEY
The word translated “miscarrying” belongs to the same Hebrew root as “bereaved,” so this is a plea spoken in the language of loss.
THE MEANING
The line speaks with terrible bluntness: it asks the LORD for a womb that miscarries and breasts that dry up. Repeated “give” makes provision sound like deprivation, turning the language of nurture toward loss. The violence remains exposed in the words themselves.
THE ROOT
מַשְׁכִּיל
mashkil
GROWS FROM
שׁכל
sh-k-l
To bereave, miscarry, or lose a child.
“childless womb” in this verse is mashkil. The word for “miscarrying” belongs to the same family as words for being bereaved of children. The image carries the weight of loss, not merely the absence of pregnancy.
ALSO GROWS
shikkel: To bereave or make childless.
שִׁכֵּל
It shows the family’s focus on the loss of children that gives the verse its severity.
shekol: Bereavement or childlessness.
שְׁכוֹל
This noun makes explicit the grief carried inside the word translated “miscarrying.”
רֶחֶם
rechem
GROWS FROM
רחם
r-ch-m
Womb; the related verb carries the sense of tender compassion.
The consonants of “womb” also appear in the Hebrew compassion vocabulary. Here, that sound-link sharpens the line: the place associated with bearing life is pictured as the site of loss.
ALSO GROWS
rachamim: Compassion or tender mercy.
רַחֲמִים
It brings the compassion resonance of the same consonants into view beside the verse’s stark image.
rachum: Compassionate or tender.
רַחוּם
This related word deepens the contrast between tenderness and the requested devastation.
תֵּן
ten
GROWS FROM
נתן
n-t-n
To give, set, or place.
The plea opens and closes with the same command to give, framing a request for deprivation in the language of provision. The repetition makes that reversal impossible to miss.
ALSO GROWS
natan: To give, set, or place.
נָתַן
The verb’s ordinary sense of giving makes the force of this particular request more stark.
mattan: A gift.
מַתָּן
The gift-word echoes the repeated “give,” even as the requested outcome is loss.
THE PATTERN
Scripture gives raw grief language in which birth itself becomes an image of loss.
Why did I not die from the womb? Why did I not breathe out when I came out of the belly?Cursed be the day in which I was born; let not the day my mother bore me be blessed.THE THREAD
And Jacob their father said to them, You have made me childless. Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and you will take Benjamin away. All these things are upon me.“Bereaved” uses the same Hebrew root, שׁכל (sh-k-l), as “miscarrying” in Hosea. Jacob’s cry makes the root’s grief explicit: the word carries the experience of losing children.
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