Though they bring up their children, yet will I bereave them, that there shall not be a man left: yea, woe also to them when I depart from them!
Though they bring up their children, yet will I bereave them, that there shall not be a man left - even though they should rear their children, yet will I bereave them (the Ephraimites) of them (Job 27:14).
Woe also to them when I depart from them! "Also:" besides and beyond the loss of children, whom they Woe also to them when I depart from them! "Also:" besides and beyond the loss of children, whom they hoped or longed for, and their loss of national power, is that last and lowest step of woe, God's departure from them; yet the ungodly in their madness desire God to depart from them (Job 21:14; Job 22:17; Matthew 8:34, "The whole city (of the Gergesenes, after the loss of their swine in the lake) came out to meet Jesus (we might have expected, in order to ask Him to save them from the evil spirit whose awful power they had just seen; but, no!) they besought Him that He would depart out of their coasts"). At last they know, to their cost, how awful it is when God has departed, (Deuteronomy 31:17; 1 Samuel 28:15-16, "Saul answered, I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answereth me no more ... Then said Samuel, Wherefore then dost thou ask of me, seeing the Lord is departed from thee, and is become thine enemy?") Compare Hosea 9:11, "Their glory shall fly a way:" and 1 Samuel 4:21, "She named the child (of Phinehas) I-chabod, saying, The glory is departed from Israel, because the ark of God was taken."