Now when she had weaned Loruhamah, she conceived, and bare a son.
Ver. 8. Now when she had weaned Loruhamah] That is, after that the patience of God had waited and long looked for their conversion; but all in vain, he resolved upon their utter rejection. And first he sent for his love tokens back again: he weans them and takes them off from those "breasts of consolation," Isaiah 66:11, the holy ordinances, deprived them of those dugs (better than wine, Son 1:4) that they had despised, carried them far away from that good land that abounded with milk and honey: the men of the East should be sent in upon them "to eat their fruit and drink their milk," Ezekiel 25:4. "This nation" (saith a divine) "is sick with a spiritual pleurisy: we begin to surfeit on the bread of life, the unadulterated milk of God's word, and to spill it. Now when God seeth his mercies lying under the table, it is just with him to call to the enemy to take away." Say not here, with those in the Gospel threatened with this judgment, "God forbid," Luke 20:16. Think it not a thing impossible that England should be thus visited. The sea is not so calm in summer, but it may be troubled with a storm: the mountain so firm, but may be moved with an earthquake. We have seen as fair suns as ours fall from the midst of heaven, for our instance, Lege historiam, ne fias historia. Read history lest you become history! Surely, except we repent and reform a little better than we have done yet, a removal of our candlestick, a total eclipse of our sun, may be as certainly foreseen and foretold, as if visions and letters were sent us from heaven, as once to the seven Churches of Asia, who sinned away their light, &c.
And bare a son] Not a daughter, as before, but a son, because under Hosea, the last king of Israel, that kingdom began a little to lift up the head, and to stand it out against the Assyrian. But this was but extremus nisus regni, the last sprunting of that dying state. For soon after, Samaria, the chief city, was closely besieged: and although it held out three whole years, with a masculine resolution, yet at length it was sacked, and all the people of the land carried captive, young and old, naked and barefoot, even with their buttocks uncovered, &c., as it is said of their confederates the Egyptians, Isaiah 20:4, and as it shall be done at length to that purple whore of Rome, who shall be stripped naked, broiled, and eaten, Revelation 17:16. A cold sweat stands already upon her limbs: and, for a presage of her future ruin, it is observed that Rome, since it became Papal, was never besieged by any but it was taken. As for their late masculine attempts and achievements (if any), it is but as here in the kingdom of Israel, a lightning before death, as the blaze of a candle a little before it goes out, the bulging of a wall that is ready to come down, or as it was said of Carthage a little before it was taken, Morientium bestiarum violentiores esse morsus, dying beasts bite cruelly.