Though they bring up their children, Yet I will bereave them, so that not a man shall be left. Indeed, woe also to them when I depart from them!
Yea - (literally, “for”) woe also unto 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 says also; “for woe also unto them.” This was the last step in the scale of misery. Beyond the loss of the children, whom they hoped or longed for, beyond the loss of their present might, and all their hope to come, there is a further undefined, unlimited, evil, “woe to them also,” when God should “withdraw,” not His care and providence only, 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). It had been their characteristic Hosea 4:16. Now God Himself would requite them, as they had requited 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?