Hosea 2:3

Hosea 2:3. And make her as a wilderness— Hebrew. And lay her waste like a wilderness. It may seem harsh to say of a woman, that she shall be laid waste like a wilderness, and reduced to the condition of a parched land. But it is to be observed, that the allegorical style makes an intercommunity of attributes between the type and the thing typified. So that when a woman is the image of a country, or of a church, that may be said of the woman which, in unfigured speech, might be said of the country, or the church, which she represents. The country might literally be made a waste wilderness, by unfruitful seasons, by the devastations of war, or of noxious vermin; a church is made a wilderness and a parched land, when the living waters of the Spirit are withheld.