Matthew Poole and continuators on Hosea 2:3

3 Lest I strip her naked , and set her as in the day that she was born , and make her as a wilderness , and set her like a dry land , and slay her with thirst .

This little word suggests great hopes, if this treacherous Wife will cease her lewdness, and become chast, she may be forgiven; it reserves room for repentance and reconciliation, without these it threatens.

As was usually done by incensed Husbands, divorcing impudent Adulteresses, vid. Ezek. 16.38, 39. and 23.26. So God will strip her of all her ornaments which he gave, so he did gradually by Israels enemies the Assyrians, till at last by Salmaneser, she was stript to the skin, and led away captive, God cast her out thus by him.

'Tis not much material to fix the period of this Birth, but 'tis enough God threatens, as sometimes we do, an extream, poor, desolate and comfortless condition, by a kind of Proverbial speech, as naked as ever born.

This phrase may somewhat intimate the time of Israels birth, viz. between their going out of Egypt, and the giving of the Law, or their entring upon their travels in the Wilderness. Their state was poor enough then, now it shall be as bad, or worse, they shall be as the Wilderness, barren and desolate, affording nothing for life or delight, much less for profit; whereas Adulteresses ordinarily hunt after profit and delights. God will punish Adulterous Israel with denying both to her, she shall be like the Wilderness, horrid and starving.

This is much the same with the former, and added to confirm and illustrate it.

All this shall be done to the end she may be destroyed, of old God led his people through the Wilderness, to a City of habitation, now he will make them as the Wilderness, that they may perish in it.

A miserable end surely, thus to be scorcht up with parching heat, so will Gods wrath burn up these wicked Idolatrous Israelites.

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