Hosea 4:17

Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone.

Beware of unholy companionships

These words do not mean that nothing was to be done for Ephraim. The prophets again and again pleaded with that people. “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in Me is thy help.” Our text is addressed to Judah. “Let Ephraim alone.” The best thing to do is not to associate with that people, keep clear of them, let them alone.

I. This applies to companionship. If you want to keep your own life pure, be careful with whom you associate. Ephraim was more prosperous and wealthy, and consequently Judah might be allured and led to offend (Hosea 4:15). We are influenced by those with whom we keep company. You may think you are strong enough to stand against the insidious influence of the world, but it touches you before you are aware. If Judah associates with Ephraim, the contact must prove baneful, and Judah will become corrupt. “Come out from among them, and be ye separate.”

II. It applies also to places we visit and frequent. “Come not ye unto Gilgal, neither go ye up to Beth-aven.” There sacrifices were offered to Baal, and the golden calf adored. Are there not Beth-avens (house of vanity) which we had better avoid? (J. Hampden Lee.)

Influence of companions

When visiting a gentleman in England, Mr. Moody observed a fine canary. Admiring his beauty, the gentleman replied, “Yes, he is beautiful, but he has lost his voice. He used to be a fine singer, but I was in the habit of hanging his cage out of the window; the sparrows came round him with their incessant chirping; gradually he ceased to sing and learned their twitter.” Oh, how truly does this represent many Christians! They used to delight in the songs of Zion, but they came into close association with those whose notes never rise so high, until at last, like the canary, they can do nothing but twitter, twitter.

Dangers of carnal security

Jeroboam made Israel to sin. From one sin they passed into another, and each succeeding year plunged them deeper in the mire of sensuality, idolatry, and corruption. At last Divine judgment came. It is expressed in the text. Because Ephraim repaid all the offers of God to receive him back to Himself with anger, therefore henceforth he was to be left to his own devices--alone, without God, to ward off or to alleviate the coming destruction. From the fate of Ephraim we draw a lesson for ourselves. God’s dealings with nations and with individuals are the same in principle, though differing necessarily in form and extent; and therefore there are the same fearful signs of God’s wrath to be traced when we are let alone in a course of known sin, without troubles, without warnings to stay us, as when a nation is suffered to run its course of accustomed riot unrestrained. In both cases this state of unnatural quiet is but the calm before the thunderstorm--the cessation of pain in some mortal disease, which marks that nature is exhausted and death at hand. He who is accepted in Jesus, the child of God, is never let alone, but, forgetting those things that are behind, he is constantly pressing forward to those things which are before. We can never be forced into sin. Our danger is that we be deceived into supposing that we have no enemies, that there is peace when there is no peace; lest we imagine that all is well with us when, it may be, God is in fact letting us alone in bitter indignation and overhanging vengeance. Anything is better than that God should leave us--let us alone in our sin. The grave is a remedy for all earthly woe, but there is no remedy for this either in time or in eternity. Consider then, all you who are living in any known sin--who are quenching the Spirit of life by not acting or striving to act up to what you know well is required from Christians--the horrible danger of settling upon your lees; of thinking no evil shall come nigh you, that your sin shall not find you out, that God will always strive with you. But the words of the text whisper strong consolation to the man of a broken spirit and contrite heart. Grant that he be afflicted and mourn, that he is in heaviness through manifold temptations, that he go mourning all the day long by reason of his sin, that he is heart-broken; yet, God be thanked, these very feelings show that he is not let alone. He is not considered as joined unto idols; and therefore, if he persevere, and be not weary in well-doing, he may rightly expect his God will turn, and leave a blessing behind Him. (H.I. Swale, M. A.)

The sin of Ephraim

As in the days before the flood, God’s Spirit does “not always strive with man”: even long-suffering itself has been exhausted, and the despisers and mockers have been either suddenly destroyed, or given over to impenitence and insensibility. The precise period, or closing of what has been called “the day of grace,” being mercifully concealed from man, its existence can form no rule or guide for his procedure.

I. The sin of Ephraim. “Joined to idols.” Idolatry is represented in Scripture as being twofold; it is both outward and inward, public and retired. It does not consist chiefly in acts of religious homage. There are idols in the heart, the family, the Church. Loving and serving the creature more than the Creator is idolatry. It is a present and existing evil, and a prevailing, constitutional, besetting, and most abhorrent sin. It falls in easily with our inbred and corrupt propensities.

II. The judgment upon Ephraim. The punishment of his crime. The text is an admonition to Judah not to hold any familiar intercourse with idolatrous and backsliding Israel. We, however, regard it as a sentence of dereliction. “Let him alone.” The phrase is elliptical. It is addressed to some one, but we do not know to whom. May be angels, providences, ministers of the sanctuary, conscience, ordinances. We may therefore wisely pray, “Say anything of or to Thy servant, rather than let him alone.” (W. B. Williams, M. A.)

God abandons the incorrigible

While anything detains the heart from God, the man is in a state of perdition. “He is joined to his idols.” There is something very dreadful in this declaration--

I. If you distinguish this desertion from another, which may befall even the subjects of Divine grace. God sometimes leaves His people when they are becoming high-minded, to convince them of their dependence upon Him. He leaves them to their own strength to show them their weakness, and to their own wisdom to make them sensible of their ignorance. But this differs exceedingly from the abandoning of the incorrigible.

II. This leaving of the sinner is a withdrawing from him everything that has a tendency to do him good. Ministers, saints, conscience, providence--“let him alone,” Ye afflictions, say nothing to him of the vanity of the world. Let all his schemes be completely successful. Let his grounds bring forth plentifully. Let him have more than heart can wish.

III. Consider the importance of the being who thus abandons. It would be much better if all your friends and neighbours, if all your fellow-creatures on whom you depend for assistance in a thousand ways, were to league together and resolve to have nothing to do with you, than for God to leave you. While God is with us we can spare other things. But what is everything, else without God?

IV. What will be the consequences of this determination? It will be a freedom to sin; it will be the removal of every hindrance in the way to perdition. When God dismisses a man, and resolves he shall have no more assistance from Him--he is sure of being ensnared by error, enslaved by lust, and “led captive by the devil at his will.” It is as if we had taken poison, and all that is necessary to its killing us is not to counteract its malignity. Such is the judgment here denounced. Notice--

1. The justice of this doom. All the punishments God inflicts are deserved, and He never inflicts without reluctance. Your condemnation turns upon a principle that will at once justify Him and silence you. “Ye will not come unto Me that ye might have life.”

2. Let me call on you to fear this judgment. And surely some of you have reason to be alarmed. With some of you the Spirit of God has long been striving, and you have “done despite unto the Spirit of grace.” Now you know what He has said, and you know what He has done. If you say you have no forebodings, the symptoms are so much the worse. Spiritual judgments are the most awful, because they are insensibly executed.

3. Perhaps some of you say, “I am afraid this is my doom already. My convictions seem to have been stifled.” Perhaps this is true. Perhaps it is a groundless apprehension. Remember, it is a blessed proof that God does not let you alone, if you cannot let Him alone. (William Jay.)

Ephraim abandoned to idols

one of the consequences and proofs of our depravity is that we are prone to turn every blessing into a curse. We are too apt to despise the forbearance of God, and to draw encouragement from it to continue in sin. Because God is slow to punish, we conclude that He never will punish. The consequence is, we become more fearless and hardened. No conduct can be more base than this, none more dangerous, and yet there is none more common. There is a propensity to it in our very nature. But God’s time of patience will have an end.

I. Ephraim’s sin. The tendency of the Israelites in the early ages of their history to idol-worship almost surpasses belief. It is seen in their making a calf at Horeb, and in Solomon’s licence to surrounding idolaters. The evil became ruinous in the kingdom of the Ten Tribes. So it is said of Ephraim, “they were joined to idols.” They sinned against light and knowledge, they transgressed the plainest and most unequivocal declaration of the Divine will; and this they did in the face of the most peremptory threatenings, the most solemn warnings, and the most affectionate entreaties. It is painful and humiliating to reflect that human beings possessed of reason and understanding should have been capable of acting in a manner so unworthy of their high origin and their exalted privileges. We are not liable to the charge of gross outward idolatry, but are there no idols set up within the temple of our hearts? Are we free from the guilt of spiritual idolatry? What is idolatry? The rendering to any creature whatever that worship, honour, and love which belong to God alone.

1. Covetousness is declared in Scripture to be idolatry. The intemperate and lovers of pleasure are idolaters. Pride is only another form of idolatry. Those are idolaters who are inordinately attached to any earthly comforts. On what things then are our affections placed? Few of us are there who have not yielded that love, fear, and confidence to the creature, which are due to God alone.

II. Ephraim’s punishment. “Let him alone.” Some regard this as the language of caution addressed to others, rather than as a threatening against Ephraim. We regard it in the latter sense. It is expressive of the severest judgment that could be inflicted on any nation or individual. It imports God’s final abandonment of them, and delivering them up to final impenitence, never more to be visited with salutary compunction or regret. The awful state in which Ephraim was thus left resembles that of incorrigible sinners in every age, especially those who appear to be given up to final impenitence and unbelief. Instances in which this threatening is carried into effect may be given.

1. When the usual means of instruction and reproof are no longer employed or afforded.

2. When the conscience becomes seared, and the Spirit of God ceases to strive with the sinner.

3. When afflictions are withheld, and providence no longer frowns upon the sinner, but suffers him to take his course unreproved. Whom the Lord loves He rebukes and chastens; but He manifests His displeasure against the impenitent by letting them alone. (R. Davies, M. A.)

A call to separation

These words are not intended as a threatening of the cessation of the Divine pleadings with an obstinate transgressor--there are no people about whom God says that they are so wedded to their sin that it is useless to try to do anything with them, and they are not a commandment to God’s servants to fling up in despair or in impatience the effort to benefit obstinate and stiff-necked evil-doers. This Book of Hosea is one long pleading with this very Ephraim, just because he is” “joined to idols.” Hosea was a prophet of the northern nation, but it is the southern nation, Judah, that is here addressed. What is meant by letting alone is plainly enough expressed in a previous verse,--“Though thou, Israel, play the harlot, let not Judah offend.” The calf-worship of Israel is held up as a warning to Judah, which is commanded to keep clear of all complicity with it, and to avoid all entangling alliances with backsliding Israel. The prophet with his “Let him alone” is saying the very same thing as the apostle with his “Come out from among them, and be ye separate.” Ephraim is wedded to his idols, as parasite to elm-tree, and so if you are joined to it you will be joined to its idols. Translate this into plain simple English, and it means this--It is a very bad sign of a Christian man when his chosen companions are people that have no sympathy with him in his religion. A great many of us will have to plead guilty to this indictment. There are many things--such as differences of position, culture, and temperament which cannot but modify the association of Christian people with one another, and may sometimes make them feel more near to un-Christian associates who are like themselves in these respects than to Christians who are not. What deadens so much of our Christianity to-day, and makes it fail as an aggressive power, is that Christian people get mixed up in utterly irreligious association with irreligious men and women, and sink their own Christianity, or at all events hide it. The sad thing is that their religion is so defective that it takes no trouble to hide it. The other sad thing is that so many Christians, so called, have so little Christianity that they never feel they are out of their element in such associations. We cannot be too intimately associated with irreligious people, if only we take our religion with us. A lesson may be learned from the separate existence of the Jews since their dispersion. They mix in the occupations of common life, and yet are as absolutely distinct as oil from the water on which it floats. So should the Church be in the world; mixing in all outward affairs, and exercising a Christianising influence on all with whom its members come in contact; and yet, by manifest diversity of sympathies and desires and affections, keeping itself absolutely distinct from the world with which it is to blend. The primitive and fundamental meaning of “holy” is “set apart.” You Christian people are set apart for the Master’s use. Let it be every man to his own company. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

The disturbing effects of Divine discipline

Sin essentially consists in a determination to have our own way--a determination planted behind the movements of thought and action, and directing them steadily to its own ends. To live, no matter what special turn our course may take, without having the main current of our life controlled by anything superior to itself, to push it all on before the energy of our own will--this is the very essence of sin. Accordingly, the action of the Divine Spirit upon the human heart is almost always, in the first instance, one of disturbance. You can detect His presence by the discomfort it creates. He awakens new thoughts, begets the suspicion that all is not within as it ought to be, and that our own way, if followed to the end, will terminate in bitterness. Because our own way is wrong, and will, if persisted in, lead to loss, God’s first endeavour is to make us uneasy in it, and, if possible, turn us out of it. With this view all His dealings are planned, and planned so wisely as to suit each successive stage of our growth and progress. In childhood we are surrounded by God’s gentle ministries. It would not be strange if God should use rougher means when His gentle ministry fails. He has recourse to the more potent voice of conscience which He seeks to rouse and to make articulate. As life advances He throws into the heart the light of His revelation. He alarms us, too, with the guilt of past sin till our heart is troubled and its peace is gone. Or He stirs up a longing for a nobler life. Unutterably sad it is when all this notwithstanding, a man moves on unchanged, still following his own way, still disobedient to the heavenly vision. It seems as if one other means, of discipline, and only one, were left. An avenue to conscience must be opened by some resistless stroke. So in middle age God oftentimes in mercy sends judgments. He breaks suddenly into the midst of life and snatches away the idol of your heart. He visits you with reverses in trade, and disappointment after disappointment, till your bewilderment grows into agony. Strange it is there should be those who have been thus emptied from vessel to vessel, still ignorant of what it means, still cleaving with a dull or desperate blindness to their own way. There is a point at which His discipline ends, just because it is useless to continue it farther. He never squanders the means of grace. He always looks for a return. It is a terrible thing that we should possess such a power of resistance as to be able to withstand God; that after He has done His best He should be obliged to leave us alone. But so it is.

I. The point at which the withdrawal of Divine discipline takes place. It is a point which is gradually reached, and not by the casual commission of a single sin, even of unusual gravity or guilt. “Being joined to idols” is a state of sin in which some wickedness is deliberately adhered to. It describes not an isolated act, but a habit which has grown easy, natural, fixed. Now a habit is not formed at once. It is the result of the repetition of an act which has become so ingrafted into a man it has grown to be part of himself. Being “joined to idols” describes a state or habit of sin that constitutes pre-eminent danger. One may be hurried into some trespass; but no one was ever hurried into a habit. Whatever excuse a man may have for a solitary evil act, he can have next to none for an evil habit. It is of such sins as those of the Pharisees we have most need to beware. They moved and breathed in an atmosphere of insincerity and self-righteousness. And this being joined to idols also describes a condition which we refuse to renounce. A man may have contracted a habit which he would willingly surrender if he could. But its grasp may have become too strong to be shaken off, his will too weak to rouse itself to the effort. But the desire for deliverance is the only door of escape. Let that depart, and there is no avenue open to your heart.

II. The manner in which the withdrawal of Divine discipline is here described. It is represented as a “letting alone.” This is marked by the cessation of all those disturbing effects which had hitherto appeared. Restraints are removed. The remonstrances of friends are given up. Truth relaxes its hold. Conscience is silent. Hence outward prosperity and ease are not by any means always a sign of God’s favour. Sometimes they may be quite the reverse. When outward prosperity co-exists with an utter indifference to Divine things, and a resolute pursuit of selfish ends, there can be no state more hazardous. But the terrible thing about this letting alone is that it may go on so silently. Even religious duties may be scrupulously maintained, though the heart will long since have ceased to enter into them. So God may even let a man alone when to all seeming He has as fast a hold of him as ever, or faster. There is only one preventive against our reaching this terrible condition, but it always proves effectual. Be loyal to the light within you, and obey the truth. Shun every compromise with evil. Make no tarrying on debatable ground. Our supreme aim as Christians is not comfort, but holiness; not to make things easy all round for ourselves, but to grow in clearness of spiritual vision, and readiness to hear the voice Divine. And to be let alone, even though it may not be to be joined to an idol, is to become drowsy and heavy-hearted, and when the Bridegroom comes, to be found slumbering and asleep. (C. Moinet, M. A.)

Warning to Judah

The Lord has given Ephraim up to his idols. The curse of God rests on him, and says, “ Let him alone.” O Judah, take heed then what you do. These words are introduced as an argument to persuade Judah not to do as Israel had done. (Jeremiah Burroughs.)

Can man sin himself out of all saving possibilities

The words of the text are a dire spectre to some.

1. The view of it taken by the alarmed sinner. Ephraim is understood by him to represent the sinner at a supposed point in his career, at which he has exhausted all the resources of Gospel grace, and sinned himself out of hope into doom. He is still a living man, and enveloped in the showers of spiritual influence; but only seemingly, so far as he is concerned. The Spirit has abandoned him for ever. All saving agencies and influences are commanded to do the same. This view still lamentably prevails. It is often preached, in austerest terms, from the pulpit, and found grimly enshrined in our popular commentaries. There are indeed some awful truths which God forbid that we should blink. A sinner may harden himself into insensibility till he is twine dead, last feeling, defiant of God, and even regardless of man. And his is a very hopeless case. More over, if we misuse privileges and opportunities, God may withdraw some of them in His judicial wisdom,--as, in the contrary case, He may enlarge them. But the vicious view so often taken of the prophet’s words is quite another thing. That view is rooted in certain dogmas of absolute predestination and partial grace, which agree as ill with the Gospel as fire does with water.

2. Look at the common view critically. Scripture contradicts it. The Gospel contradicts it. Hosea himself, throughout this book, emphatically contradicts it.

(1) Scripture contradicts it. Where is it taught? Give and criticise the passages relied on (Genesis 6:3; 1Pe 3:18-20; 1 Samuel 28:15; Luke 19:42).

(2) The Gospel contradicts it. The Bible is one thing, the Gospel is another. The Bible is the collection of inspired records: the Gospel is the good news therein contained of salvation through Christ crucified for every creature under heaven. But good news to every man this Gospel cannot be, if some living men are already sealed up for perdition. A limited atonement is absolutely irreconcilable with a universal Gospel, and no less so is a limited provision of the Spirit. The section we are examining is one way of limiting the Spirit, and it is one which takes the great living heart out of the Gospel. But as God is true, the Gospel is good news, and brings salvation to every living man.

(3) Hosea himself contradicts it. Ephraim means, not an individual, but a nation. Desolation is to befall Israel, but the “valley of Achor” is to be to her “a door of hope” (Hosea 2:14; Hosea 5:15; Hosea 6:1; Hosea 10:12; Hosea 11:1; Hosea 12:1).

3. What is the true view to be taken of the text? The key to it is to be found in the context. While Ephraim had become hopelessly wedded to idolatry, Judah, the adjoining kingdom of the two tribes, had not yet plunged into that foul and ruinous abyss (Hosea 11:12). Judah was, however, in imminent danger of drifting after Ephraim into that terrible vortex. Hence the twofold warning in the passage now before us--the formal warning to Judah, and the yet more awful undertone of warning to Ephraim. “Ephraim is joined to idols.” “Let not Judah offend”; that is, “Judah, hold aloof; let Ephraim alone.” Ephraim is the consociate of idolatries; Judah, be not Ephraim’s associate. Partake not Ephraim’s sins, lest ye partake Ephraim’s plagues. The very expression, “Let him alone,” is used by our Lord in this same sense, when warning His disciples against the Pharisees--“They be blind leaders of the blind; let them alone.” The meaning is--beware of their companionship. Have nothing to do with them. Gilgal and Bethel, which Judah was warned not to visit, were on the very border between the rival kingdoms. This conterminous position, and the sacred associations of the places made them specially perilous. The moral is obvious.

1. Beware of freedom, falsely so called. There is a liberty which means libertinism, and which always “genders to bondage.”

2. Beware of evil company. It has been the ruin of myriads (1 John 2:15; 2 Corinthians 6:14). Faithful Judah, however strong in purpose, ran a terrible risk if he associated with treacherous Ephraim.

3. Let us beware of doubting the fulness and freeness of God’s pardoning mercy, as revealed in the Gospel, to all men everywhere. Nothing but a desperate bent in this direction can account for the perversion of such simple texts as the one we have been investigating. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)

Ephraim let alone

These words give us this important instruction, that God may be so provoked, and become finally so full of wrath, as to leave the guilty creature to himself, and remonstrate with him no more.

I. Ephraim’s conditions. “Joined to idols.” That is, as having withdrawn and transferred his allegiance; as having resisted the means used with him for his recovery; and as having come into close affinity with that which was antagonistic to God. It was the curse of Israel that it loved strange gods, and was ever ready to leave the Lord and join itself to them. And what is Ephraim but a counterpart of many a one in the present day? The sin which seemed so terrible in him is common enough if men’s eyes were only opened wide enough to see. Worldly men will repudiate the idea of being under the same circumstances as Ephraim. Because the outward symbols arc not the same, men argue that the main principles are distinct; but in the eyes of God covetousness is idolatry, and a man can be an idolater without worshipping a god of wood or stone. A wife or child may be the finely sculptured idol; or gain anticipated or acquired may be the great image, like Nebuchadnezzar’s, all overlaid with gold. Remember that a practical withdrawal from Christ is abundantly enough to prove the ruin of a soul. The transfer of allegiance may be a silent reality. The position of an idolater may be assumed without one’s attracting even the attention of his fellows. But Ephraim had added sin to sin, by resisting all the means which were used to bring him back. God did not lightly part with Israel. The hand of justice long lingered on the hilt before it drew the sword. The hand of mercy long trembled before it let go its grasp. A dull, inactive, heavy resistance to the means of grace is a fearful proof of the state of practical idolatry in which some men are. The work of a soul’s ruin is carried on quietly. Many a gracious influence has been resisted. Many a teaching providence has been thrown away. The heart has become, by the very order of nature, harder and harder; the conscience has become less impressible; the soul has become more habituated to being away from God. Then the sentence may go forth, “Let him alone.”

II. Ephraim’s curse. The words are as fearful as any which ever passed from the lips of God. To secure their ruin, and to bring down full vengeance upon them, all that was required was that they should be left to themselves. It involved--

1. A withdrawal of enlightening influence. This may occur gradually or suddenly. It is possible for this curse to be in operation, and yet for no outward change of any kind to be detected in the man upon whom it is laid.

2. Disturbing influences are also purposely withheld. The cutting dispensations under which some of us now smart so much, are perhaps the only means to keep us away from that fatal ease whose end is death. When God’s work is done in us, all trial will be taken away, but woe betide the man who gains freedom from trial by being let alone. Beware, then, how you trifle with the present, how you continue unmoved beneath the gracious influences which are now being brought to bear on your soul. (P. B. Power, M. A.)

Let him alone

“In a sense, all men are idolaters.” Since man by nature is, in spirit although not in fact, as much an idolater as the pagans of any heathen land, it may be justly said of all who have been converted by the grace of God, that He has “taken them from among the heathen.” Whatever comes between the soul and God, whatever supplants His love in the heart is an “idol.” It may be the love of what is unlawful to be loved, or it may be the unlawful love of what in itself is allowed.

I. The sinful alliance. “Joined to idols.” There are several particulars characterising this union.

1. It is illegal. All the inhibitions of God are but the voice of perfect love and wisdom enforcing the perfect laws of parental government. In a properly regulated family there are laws, and these have a threefold purpose--

(1) The good of each individual member.

(2) The preservation of one member from the injuries of another.

(3) The good, or honour, of the parental head.

The Divine laws are illustrated by the human. To be “joined to idols “ is to be allied with claims which are foreign to the nature and opposed to the claims of God, and such an alliance is illegal.

2. It is unnatural. Redeemed and justified man is among the sublime confederacy of loyal subjects of the Creator. But the sinner has allied himself with the dark forces of hell--he is an alienated being.

3. It is degrading. For a member of a large and noble family to become united with guilt and ignominy would be to entail upon himself utter disgrace, to cast a shade over the honour of his family name, and to forfeit all claims to the love of kindred or respect of friends. And every sinner, in the eye of purity, is a walking plague, a moral Cain.

4. It is irrational. Sin is a disease producing madness.

II. The ruinous alliance.

1. The soul may be said to be “let alone” when it seeks satisfaction apart from God.

2. When the blood of the atonement is set at nought,

3. When the truth of God loses its wonted power to “convince of sin, righteousness,” etc. The Bible speaks, ministers speak, providence speaks, as usual, but conscience hears not.

4. The sentence, “let him alone,” will have a future application to the sinner’s state. “Let him alone” is the burning inscription on the walls of hell’s prison-house. (G. Hunt Jackson.)

Spiritual abandonment

I. The sin of Ephraim--idolatry. We are apt to be surprised at the proneness of the Israelites to the sin of idolatry. Yet it may be doubted whether we have not a great deal in common with idolaters. The same vice is apt to show itself in different forms--forms produced by circumstances of age and country. There is the same heart in the man and the boy; but the result of the same passions is different at the two different periods of life. And so we may not worship idols, and yet we may be partakers of the iniquity of those who did. Tim fountain-head and origin of Israel’s sin was their own wilfulness, Wilfulness and impatience of old took the shape of idolatry; they now wear the form of heresy, and separation, and divisions. It was a zeal for religion which prostrated Israel at the footstool of idols; it is zeal without knowledge which makes men forsake the Catholic faith for crude theories of their own.

II. The punishment of Ephraim--let alone. God did not, in so speaking, design to let idolatry go unpunished. “Let him alone” proclaims that idolatry would prove its own punishment; so sure, so inevitable, so miserable would be the consequences of forsaking the true God, that it would need no further outbreak of wrath to vindicate the honour of the Almighty. To forsake God is to forsake our own mercies. You cannot drop a single doctrine of the Catholic faith, without that doctrine, sooner or later, avenging itself. Truth neglected will make itself felt. God lets matters take their course, saying of those who follow their own devices, “He is joined to idols: let him alone.”

III. What is it for an individual to be let alone of the Almighty? God has implanted in the heart of every man something which chides him whenever he rejects the right and chooses what is wrong. Very wonderful is our mental organisation. More sublime seems conscience on her judgment seat, weighing and balancing every idea which memory or invention suggests; and if her judgment be not adopted, if we will not act by her verdict, chastising with a whip of scorpions. If, although remonstrated with as we are by our natural consciences and by the Eternal Spirit, we still fall into presumptuous sin,--what should we become? The judgment threatened in the text is one which would reduce us to the position of Satan himself. For what will follow God letting a man alone? That man will experience no further promptings and warnings, but be left unrestrained by any secret reluctance to work all manner of iniquity. Assure me that a man is troubled when he has done wrong, that he feels disquieted and restless, that after indulging his passions, he is sensible of disgust and loathing, and I have hope that the day will come when he will throw off the bondage of his lusts. But assure me that he is happy in his iniquity, that he can rob and cheat, and lie and be drunken without being miserable afterwards, and I shudder lest indeed he has come to such a point as to be left alone of God. (J. R. Woodford, M. A.)

A sin and its punishment

This passage exhibits against this people a charge and a threatening.

I. A charge. “He is joined to idols.”

1. All true believers are said to be “joined to the Lord.” Faith not only forms an union, but, as it were, an identity with the Saviour, so that they are no longer twain, but one, one mystical person, one spirit.

2. The prodigal son is said to have “joined himself to a citizen in a far country.” He fastened himself to him.

3. Of Israel it is said, he has “joined himself unto Baal-peor,” an impure idol of the Ammonites. Christianity has abolished idolatry from the nations of Europe: yet the world is still full of mental idolatry, not less sinful or less dangerous, though not equally degrading in the eye of reason. To trust in an arm of flesh, to love the creature more than the Creator, is to be joined to idols. The sin of idolatry appears in such variety of forms that perhaps no one in the present life is entirely free from it. It exists in every inordinate affection, in every undue attachment to created good.

II. A threatening. This may be the language of caution--Do not enter into any friendship with such an idolatrous people. It may, however, be regarded as a warning and threatening against Ephraim. The sinner is delivered up to final impenitence, never more to be visited with compunction or regret. God suffers the sinner unchecked to pursue his own way, and take the consequences. The instances in which this awful threatening may be inflicted are the following--

1. When the usual means of instruction and reproof are no longer employed or afforded.

2. When conscience becomes seared, and the Spirit of God ceases to strive with the sinner, then also may he be said to be given up.

3. This fearful state may be apprehended when afflictions are withheld, and providence no longer frowns upon the sinner s way, but suffers him to take his course unreproved. When a physician ceases to administer his bitter potions, or a surgeon to search the wound, it is a sign that they look upon the case as desperate.

(1) If God let us alone, we shall be sure to let Him alone, and become prayerless, unfeeling, and incorrigible. We then cast off fear, and restrain prayer before God.

(2) Though God should let us alone, Satan will not.

(3) If God let us alone it is the prelude of our destruction. We are left in our sins, surrounded with enemies and dangers.

(4) Should God let us alone now, He will not do so hereafter. Learn--

1. The wretched state into which sin may have brought us.

2. The necessity of constant watchfulness and prayer, that none of these evils come upon us. It is better to endure the deepest distress than to enjoy a false and delusive peace. Let us dread nothing so much as a state of insensibility; a being “ past feeling” is the certain sign of perdition. (B. Beddome, M. A.)

The derelict

I. The meaning of the verse and the kernel-truth contained in it. Under the seductive influence and example of Ahab and his queen Jezebel, the revolt of Israel had become complete. From the false worship of the true God they had turned further aside to the worship of false gods, and were as really idolaters as the heathen nations around them. But it was not all at once, or without many measures aimed at their reformation, that God finally abandoned them. The spirit of His dealings with them, for a long period, was expressed in those tender words, as if spoken by a father over a prodigal son, “How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?” A succession of prophets, like Elijah and Elisha, was sent to remonstrate with them; severe chastisements, such as famine and other national calamities, were commissioned to “hedge up their way with thorns,” to bring their sins to their remembrance, and to lead them to a penitent return to God. But while individuals were thereby recovered, any good effects upon the nation were temporary and partial. And then, at length, the patience of a long-suffering God becoming exhausted, He declares His holy purpose to suspend all further measures for their recovery. This unfolds the meaning and presents the remarkable central doctrine of the verse. Some have indeed understood it to bear a different sense, and to convey a seasonable warning to the neighbouring kingdom of Judah, rather than to announce the final rejection of Israel. As if it were said: “He is joined to idols; beware of following his evil example; keep aloof, yea, at a far distance from him. You cannot touch pitch and not be defiled. When the dove associates with the raven, it soon begins to smell of carrion. Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, hut rather reprove them.” And this is a most seasonable thought in itself, which has been anticipated in a previous verse; but it is not the immediate truth expressed in these solemn words. Their general meaning is, that when individuals or a nation continue and obstinately persist in sin, especially in the face of providential chastisement and means of grace, it is not an uncommon thing with God at length to give up His gracious dealings with them, and to abandon them to ruin. The same doctrine, declaring one of the laws of the Divine procedure, comes out with startling distinctness in other passages of Scripture. Thus in Ezekiel: “As for you, O house of Israel, thus saith the Lord God, Go ye, serve ye every one his idols.” And in the Book of Psalms: “My people would not hearken to My voice, and Israel would none of Me: so I gave them to their own hearts’ lusts, and they walked in their own counsels.”

II. And this doctrine or law of God’s moral government has written itself in many retributive facts on the history of not a few of the nations of the earth. Thus, when a people have shown a disposition, in the mass of their population, to reject and persecute the religion of Christ, and they have persisted in this even when lengthened opportunities for repentance have been given them and they have been tried by various agencies to bring them to a right state of mind, they have at length been abandoned and given over to the error and darkness which they preferred. It would be easy to name more than one nation in Europe which, at the great Protestant reformation three centuries ago, drove away the Gospel from their gates, and turned its messengers into martyrs, and which have been sinking lower and lower in the scale of nations ever since. The same thing holds true of individuals, only with a depth of meaning which, from the nature of the case, is not applicable in its full extent to organised communities. When men persist, in indifference and unbelief, and in following after their hearts’ idols, and all this in the face of measures to break them off from their forbidden attachments, God at length withdraws every means of recovering them, and gives them over to their merited doom. This terrible experience is not indeed to be confounded with that temporary withdrawal of the light of His countenance with which the Father sometimes punishes those children who have partially wandered from Him. This form of Divine dealing is wise, merciful, and paternal, and is referred to in a subsequent verse: “I will go,” says Jehovah, “and return to My place, till they acknowledge their offence and seek My face: in their affliction they will seek Me early.” But the dealing of which this verse speaks is judicial and punitive. And so it also was with the miserable, blighted, heaven-deserted Saul, like his own mountain of Gilboa, with no dew resting on it. It is a melancholy thing to see a physician leaving the sick-chamber, and declaring that he can do no more for his patient. It is sad to hear of a crew leaving a wrecked ship, escaping from the doomed thing, and making no more efforts to keep it from sinking. But what is this to God’s abandoning an incorrigible human spirit! Lord, afflict me with chastisements, bereave me with strokes, do anything to me rather than say, “He is joined to idols: let him alone.” (A. Thomson, D. D.)

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