Hosea / Question
The phrase appears in Hosea 1:10. In the same verse, those once called “Not My People” are said to be called “Children of the living God.”
In Hosea 1:10–11, the message swings from earlier rejection language to an unexpected promise of reversal. Israel’s future population will be vast beyond counting, and the very location where they were told, “You are not my people,” will become the place where they are addressed as God’s children. These verses close the opening scene where Hosea’s family life functions as a public sign: the children’s names and the spoken explanations announce broken relationship and looming consequences.
These two verses deliberately reverse the rejection announced just before ("not my people"). The text’s explicit claim is that Israel’s future will not end in shrinkage and abandonment: their numbers will become impossible to count, and their public identity will be renamed in a way that signals restored belonging ("sons of the living God").
A common mistake is to treat this as trivia. Names, places, numbers, and sequence details often carry memory, covenant identity, or narrative movement in the biblical story.
Start with Hosea 1:10, then read the surrounding section so the answer stays connected to the passage's flow.
10Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which can`t be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass that, in the place where it was said to them, You are not my people, it shall be said to them, [You are] the sons of the living God.