The Curse of the Cradle: Grapes in the Wilderness Text: Hosea 9:10-17
Introduction: The War on the Future
We live in a civilization that is at war with children. This is not hyperbole; it is a plain statement of fact. We have declared the womb to be the most dangerous place on earth for a human being. We have invented countless ways to ensure that the sexual act, which God designed for the glorious and joyful creation of life, is rendered sterile. Our culture celebrates barrenness as liberation and fertility as a burden. And when life does inconveniently appear, we have industrialized its destruction. We have become as detestable as that which we love, and what we love is sterile autonomy.
And so, when we come to a passage like this one in Hosea, our first impulse is to be shocked at God. A miscarrying womb? Dry breasts? Slaying the desirable ones of the womb? This sounds harsh, cruel, and vindictive to our modern ears. But our modern ears have been stuffed with the cotton of sentimentality. We are shocked at the curse, but we are not shocked at the sin that earned it. We strain at the gnat of God's righteous judgment and swallow the camel of our own idolatrous rebellion. We have it exactly backward.
The central blessing of God's covenant with His people, from Genesis onward, has always been fruitfulness. Be fruitful and multiply. I will make your descendants as the stars of the heaven. The fruit of the womb is a reward. But covenant has two sides: blessing for obedience, and curses for disobedience. And the curses are not arbitrary. They are always a talionic, ironic reversal of the blessings. If you worship the God of life, He gives you life, and life abundant. If you worship idols of death and sterility, then He gives you exactly what you have asked for. He answers your prayers. The curse of the cradle is not God being monstrous; it is God giving a rebellious people over to the logical consequences of their own desires.
Hosea is showing us that when a nation abandons the true God, it does not become neutral. It begins to worship something else, and in so doing, it begins to die. This passage is a diagnosis of a terminal disease. It is a spiritual autopsy of a nation that chose shame over glory, and barrenness over life.
The Text
I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your fathers as the earliest fruit on the fig tree in its first season. But they came to Baal-peor and devoted themselves to shame, And they became as detestable as that which they loved. As for Ephraim, their glory will fly away like a bird, No birth, no pregnancy, and no conception! Though they bring up their children, Yet I will bereave them until not a man is left. Surely, woe to them indeed when I depart from them! Ephraim, as I have seen, Is planted in a pasture like Tyre; But Ephraim will bring out his children for killing. Give them, O Yahweh, what will You give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts. All their evil is at Gilgal; Indeed, I came to hate them there! Because of the evil of their deeds I will drive them out of My house! I will love them no more; All their princes are rebels. Ephraim is stricken; their root is dried up; They will bear no fruit. Even though they bear children, I will put to death the desirable ones of their womb. My God will despise them Because they have not listened to Him; And they will be those who flee among the nations.
(Hosea 9:10-17 LSB)
Covenantal Delight and Idolatrous Devotion (v. 10)
The chapter opens with a poignant memory of God's initial relationship with Israel.
"I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your fathers as the earliest fruit on the fig tree in its first season. But they came to Baal-peor and devoted themselves to shame, And they became as detestable as that which they loved." (Hosea 9:10)
Imagine a traveler, exhausted and thirsty, stumbling through a barren wilderness and suddenly coming upon a vine loaded with ripe grapes. Imagine a farmer seeing the very first, most promising fig on his tree after a long winter. This is the imagery God uses to describe His delight in early Israel. It was a picture of pure, unexpected joy and promise. This is the language of covenantal love. God chose them, delighted in them, and saw in them the promise of a great harvest.
But the memory immediately sours. The second half of the verse shows the catastrophic turn. "But they came to Baal-peor." This refers to the incident in Numbers 25, where the men of Israel were seduced by Moabite women into sexual immorality and the worship of their god, Baal. They yoked themselves to a false god. Notice the language: they "devoted themselves to shame." The Hebrew word for shame here is bosheth, a term often used as a contemptuous substitute for Baal. Baal worship was shameful, involving ritual prostitution and debauchery.
And here is the central spiritual law of the passage: "And they became as detestable as that which they loved." You become what you worship. This is the unchangeable grammar of the spiritual world. If you worship the holy, transcendent, loving God, you will be transformed into His likeness, from glory to glory. If you worship a detestable, shameful, worthless idol, you will become detestable, shameful, and worthless yourself. You cannot worship idols of wood and stone without your heart becoming wooden and stony. You cannot worship a god of licentious shame without becoming a shameful person. And you cannot worship a god of death without becoming an agent of death.
The Curse of Barrenness (v. 11-13)
The consequence of becoming like their idol is the complete reversal of the covenant blessing of fruitfulness.
"As for Ephraim, their glory will fly away like a bird, No birth, no pregnancy, and no conception! Though they bring up their children, Yet I will bereave them until not a man is left. Surely, woe to them indeed when I depart from them! Ephraim, as I have seen, Is planted in a pasture like Tyre; But Ephraim will bring out his children for killing." (Hosea 9:11-13 LSB)
What is the glory of a people? Biblically, it is their children. It is their future. And God says this glory will simply fly away. He pronounces a three-fold curse on the womb: no conception, no pregnancy, no birth. This is a direct undoing of the creation mandate. And even if, by some chance, they manage to have children, God promises to bereave them. The blessing of children becomes the agony of burying them.
The ultimate woe is not the loss of children, but the reason for it: "Woe to them indeed when I depart from them!" The greatest curse that can befall any person or any people is for God to leave them to themselves. When God's presence departs, all that is left is the logical outworking of sin, which is always death and decay.
Verse 13 gives a devastating picture. Ephraim was once planted like Tyre, a rich, prosperous, and seemingly secure city. They looked good. They were in a green pasture. But this external prosperity masked a deep spiritual rot. And the result of this rot is that Ephraim "will bring out his children for killing." This is not just about death by plague or war. This is an active participation. By their idolatry, they are marking their own children for slaughter. This is precisely what our civilization does. We live in unprecedented material prosperity, planted in a pasture like Tyre, and we bring out our children to the slaughter in the abortion clinics. We are living this verse.
The Prophet's Awful Prayer (v. 14)
What comes next is one of the most jarring prayers in all of Scripture.
"Give them, O Yahweh, what will You give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts." (Hosea 9:14 LSB)
The prophet is so aligned with God's righteous judgment that he prays for it. He hesitates for a moment, "what will You give?" as if searching for the right words to capture the horror of the situation. And then he asks for the curse to be formalized. Why would he pray such a thing? Is this just spite? Not at all. This is a prayer of righteous realism. Hosea understands that it is a greater evil for this rebellious, idolatrous generation to raise up another generation just like themselves, children who will be indoctrinated into the cult of Baal-bosheth and marked for destruction. A miscarrying womb is a terrible thing, but it is a lesser evil than raising a child for slaughter, whether spiritual or physical. This is a prayer that God would halt the generational compounding of sin. It is a terrible mercy.
The Root of the Rot (v. 15-17)
God then identifies the historical and spiritual center of the rebellion.
"All their evil is at Gilgal; Indeed, I came to hate them there! Because of the evil of their deeds I will drive them out of My house! I will love them no more; All their princes are rebels. Ephraim is stricken; their root is dried up; They will bear no fruit... My God will despise them Because they have not listened to Him; And they will be those who flee among the nations." (Hosea 9:15-17 LSB)
Gilgal was a place of sacred memory. It was where Israel first entered the promised land, where they renewed the covenant of circumcision, and where they celebrated their first Passover. It was a place of beginnings. But it had become a center for idolatry and corrupt worship. The sin is worse because of the light they had. Their evil was concentrated at the very place of their covenant history. And so God says, "I came to hate them there." This is not an emotional outburst. This is the formal, legal language of covenant. God's covenant love (hesed) is His steadfast loyalty to His people. His covenant hatred is His active judgment and rejection of those who break the covenant. He is going to "drive them out of My house." This is divorce. This is exile.
The problem is not on the surface. "Ephraim is stricken; their root is dried up." The disease is total. A tree with a dead root cannot produce fruit. And even if some freakish, unnatural fruit appears, it is destined for death. The final diagnosis is given in verse 17: "they have not listened to Him." This is the root of all sin. It is a refusal to hear and obey the Word of God. The result is excommunication from the land and from God's presence. They will become wanderers among the nations, a people without a home, because they rejected their home with God.
The Fruitful Root
This is a terrifying passage. It describes the de-creation of a people. It is the story of a nation that chose death and got what it wanted. And it is a mirror for our own time. We too have devoted ourselves to shame, and we are becoming as detestable as the idols of sterile self-worship that we love. The curse of the cradle is upon us.
Is there any hope? If the root is dried up, is it all over? For that specific generation of Ephraim, the judgment was final. But in this very curse, the gospel is foreshadowed. The judgment on Israel's barrenness points us to our need for a new and better Israel, one with a root that can never dry up.
Jesus Christ is the true Vine, the fruitful Root. He came to His people and was rejected. He took the curse of exile upon Himself, being cast out of the city to die. He was cut off from the land of the living, bearing the ultimate bereavement of the Father's departure: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He took the curse of fruitlessness upon Himself; He had no wife and no children. He became the ultimate barren one on our behalf.
But because His root was perfectly righteous, death could not hold Him. He rose from the dead, and now, by His Spirit, He grafts dead branches like us into Himself. He gives us life from His life. The curse of the miscarrying womb is overturned in the glorious fruitfulness of the Church. Through the gospel, God is raising up spiritual children from every tribe and tongue and nation. "Sing, O barren one, who did not bear; break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who have not been in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married," says the Lord (Isaiah 54:1).
The choice before us is the same choice that was before Ephraim. We can worship the modern Baals of convenience, autonomy, and self, and receive the curse of a dried-up root and a barren future. Or we can repent of our detestable loves, turn to Christ, and be grafted into the true Root. Only there will we find forgiveness, life, and true fruitfulness that will last for eternity.