What Does Hosea 1:8 Mean in the King James?
Now when she had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she conceived, and bare a son.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The verse holds a new birth beside a name that says compassion is absent, leaving neither one to cancel the other.
THE MEANING
You encounter a life marked by withheld compassion even as another birth unfolds: Lo-ruhamah is weaned, and a son is conceived and born. The verse holds the hurt and the continuation together without declaring that one repairs the other.
THE ROOT
לֹא רֻחָמָה
lōʾ ruḥāmāh
GROWS FROM
ר־ח־ם
r-ḥ-m
To show compassion or have mercy; to feel deep, inward pity.
“Lo-ruhamah” in this verse is lōʾ ruḥāmāh. Lo negates ruhamah, the feminine form meaning “one shown compassion,” making the name a sentence of absence rather than just a label. The same root family includes the word for “womb” and the word for “compassion,” placing the name beside the embodied care it negates.
ALSO GROWS
raḥam: To show compassion or have mercy.
רָחַם
This verb is the root of ruhamah and makes the name’s withheld compassion explicit.
reḥem: Womb.
רֶחֶם
The shared root links compassion with embodied, womb-deep care.
raḥamim: Compassion, mercies.
רַחֲמִים
This plural form shows the compassion carried in the root that the name negates.
THE PATTERN
Compassion is a relational response that scripture names both in its absence and in the care of a parent.
And she conceived again, and bare a daughter. And God said unto him, Call her name Lo-ruhamah: for I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel; but I will utterly take them away.Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him.And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.THE THREAD
And I will sow her unto me in the earth; and I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy; and I will say to them which were not my people, Thou art my people; and they shall say, Thou art my God.The root in Lo-ruhamah (“not shown compassion”) appears again in “have mercy” for the one who had not obtained mercy. The name’s negation is not the root’s final word: the same root can name compassion received.
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