Psalms 81:12(v17)So I let them go after the stubbornness of their hearts, that they might walk in their own counsels.
Jeremiah 51:1(v19)Yahweh says: “Behold, I will raise up against Babylon, and against those who dwell in Lebkamai, a destroying wind.
Revelation 22:11(v17)He who acts unjustly, let him act unjustly still. He who is filthy, let him be filthy still. He who is righteous, let him do righteousness…
Proverbs 30:15-16(v18)“The leech has two daughters: ‘Give, give.’ “There are three things that are never satisfied; four that don’t say, ‘Enough:’ Sheol, the…
Isaiah 1:29(v19)For they shall be ashamed of the oaks which you have desired, and you shall be confounded for the gardens that you have chosen.
Show all 33 cross-references
Jeremiah 4:11-12(v19)At that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem, “A hot wind from the bare heights in the wilderness toward the daughter of my…
Hosea 4:4(v17)“Yet let no man bring a charge, neither let any man accuse; for your people are like those who bring charges against a priest.
Hosea 11:2(v17)They called to them, so they went from them. They sacrificed to the Baals, and burned incense to engraved images.
Hosea 13:2(v17)Now they sin more and more, and have made themselves molten images of their silver, even idols according to their own understanding, all of…
Hosea 13:15(v19)Though he is fruitful among his brothers, an east wind will come, the breath of Yahweh coming up from the wilderness; and his spring will…
Micah 3:11(v18)Her leaders judge for bribes, and her priests teach for a price, and her prophets of it tell fortunes for money: yet they lean on Yahweh,…
Matthew 15:14(v17)Leave them alone. They are blind guides of the blind. If the blind guide the blind, both will fall into a pit.”
Hosea 12:1(vv17, 19)Ephraim feeds on wind, and chases the east wind. He continually multiplies lies and desolation. They make a covenant with Assyria, and oil…
Exodus 23:8(v18)“You shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds those who have sight and perverts the words of the righteous.
Deuteronomy 16:19(v18)You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality. You shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and…
Deuteronomy 32:32-33(v18)For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, of the fields of Gomorrah. Their grapes are poison grapes. Their clusters are bitter. Their wine is…
1 Samuel 8:3(v18)His sons didn’t walk in his ways, but turned away after dishonest gain, took bribes, and perverted justice.
1 Samuel 12:3-4(v18)Here I am. Witness against me before Yahweh, and before his anointed. Whose ox have I taken? Whose donkey have I taken? Whom have I…
2 Kings 17:7-17(v18)It was so because the children of Israel had sinned against Yahweh their God, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the…
Psalms 47:9(v18)The princes of the peoples are gathered together, the people of the God of Abraham. For the shields of the earth belong to God. He is…
Isaiah 42:17(v19)“Those who trust in engraved images, who tell molten images, ‘You are our gods,’ will be turned back. They will be utterly disappointed.
Jeremiah 2:21(v18)Yet I had planted you a noble vine, a pure and faithful seed. How then have you turned into the degenerate branches of a foreign vine to me?
Jeremiah 2:26-27(v19)As the thief is ashamed when he is found, so the house of Israel is ashamed: they, their kings, their princes, their priests, and their…
Jeremiah 2:36-37(v19)Why do you go about so much to change your ways? You will be ashamed of Egypt also, as you were ashamed of Assyria. You will also leave…
Jeremiah 3:24-25(v19)But the shameful thing has devoured the labor of our fathers from our youth, their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters.…
Jeremiah 17:13(v19)Yahweh, the hope of Israel, all who forsake you will be disappointed. Those who depart from me will be written in the earth, because they…
Hosea 4:2(v18)There is cursing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break boundaries, and bloodshed causes bloodshed.
Hosea 4:10(v18)They will eat, and not have enough. They will play the prostitute, and will not increase; because they have abandoned giving to Yahweh.
Hosea 10:6(v19)It also will be carried to Assyria for a present to a great king. Ephraim will receive shame, and Israel will be ashamed of his own counsel.
Amos 5:12(v18)For I know how many your offenses, and how great are your sins— you who afflict the just, who take a bribe, and who turn away the needy in…
Micah 7:3(v18)Their hands are on that which is evil to do it diligently. The ruler and judge ask for a bribe; and the powerful man dictates the evil…
Zechariah 5:9-11(v19)Then I lifted up my eyes and saw, and behold, there were two women, and the wind was in their wings. Now they had wings like the wings of a…
Isaiah 1:21-22(v18)How the faithful city has become a prostitute! She was full of justice. Righteousness lodged in her, but now there are murderers. Your…
33 distinct cross-references across this passage (34 total citations).
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (19 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
John Calvin1540 · Public DomainOn vv17–19As if wearied, God here bids his Prophet to…
As if wearied, God here bids his Prophet to rest; as though he said, “Since I prevail nothing with this people, they must be given up; cease from thy work.” God had set Hosea over the Israelites for this end, to lead them to repentance, if they could by any means be reformed: the duty of the Prophet, enjoined by God, was, to bring back miserable and straying men from their error, and to restore them again to the obedience of pure faith. He now saw that the Prophet’s labour was in vain, without any success. Hence he was, as I have said, wearied, and bids the Prophet to desist: Leave them, he says; that is, “There is no use for thee to weary thyself any more; I dismiss thee from thy labour, and will not have thee to take any more trouble; for they are wholly incurable.” For by saying that they had joined themselves to idols, he means, that they could not be drawn from that perverseness in which they had grown hardened; as though he said, “This is an alliance that cannot be broken.” And he alludes to the marriage which he had before mentioned: for the Israelites, we know, had been joined to God, for he had adopted them to be a holy people to himself; they afterwards adopted impious forms of worship. But yet there was a hope of recovery, until they became wholly attached to their idols, and clave so fast to them, that they could not be drawn away. This alliance the Prophet points out when he says, They are joined to idols
But he mentions the tribe of Ephraim, for the kings, (I mean, of Israel,) we know, sprang from that tribe; and at the same time he reproaches that tribe for having abused God’s blessing. We know that Ephraim was blessed by holy Jacob in preference to his elder brother; and yet there was no reason why Jacob put aside the first-born and preferred the younger, except that God in this case manifested his own good pleasure. The ingratitude of Ephraim was therefore less excusable, when he not only fell away from the pure worship of God, but polluted also the whole land; for it was Jeroboam who introduced ungodly superstitions; he therefore was the source of all the evil. This is the reason why the Prophet now expressly mentions Ephraim: though it is a form of speaking, commonly used by all the Prophets, to designate Israel, by taking a part for the whole, by the name of Ephraim.
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But this passage is worthy of being noticed, that we may attend to God’s reproofs, and not remain torpid when he rouses us; for we ought ever to fear, lest he should suddenly reject us, when he is wearied with our perverseness, or when he conceives such a displeasure as not to deign to speak to us any more. It follows —
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators1599 · Public DomainOn vv18–19They are so impudent in receiving bribes, that they…
They are so impudent in receiving bribes, that they will command men to bring them unto them.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp1656 · Public DomainOn vv17–19Hos 4:17 Ephraim [is] joined to idols: let him…
Hos 4:17 Ephraim [is] joined to idols: let him alone.
Ver. 17. Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone] Ephraim, that is, the ten revolted tribes, who are called Ephraim in opposition to Judah: 1. Because that tribe was the greatest of the ten; 2. Jeroboam, the ringleader of that revolt, was of that tribe; 3. They rebelled at Shechem, which was in that tribe, and from thenceforth was joined or glued to idols, as the fornicator is to his harlot, with whom he becometh one flesh, and from whom there is no dissuading him. Some fetch the metaphor from enchanters; who by their conjuring art have society and fellowship with the devils; so had Ephraim with idols; and like an enchanted person, he could not stir from them, but stood fastened to them as to a stock or stake. The Tyrians, when besieged by Alexander, fearing the departure of their god Apollo from them, laid chains upon his statue, and fastened him to his temple. Ephraim was so fastened to his idols ( terriculis so Junius renders this text) that there is no likelihood of his being sundered from them: he had taken fast hold of deceit, Jer 8:5, and would not loose his hold. Let him alone, therefore, saith either God to the prophet (lay out no more words, lose no more labour upon him) or the prophet to Judah; let them even go, have nothing to do with them, though they be your brethren, meddle not with them; let Christ alone, to deal with them at his coming: Maranatha, the Lord cometh. Meanwhile, they lie under a dreadful spiritual judgment, worse than all the plagues of Egypt; even a dead and dedolent disposition, whereunto they are delivered. This is worse than to be delivered to Satan: for so a man may be, and recover out of his snare by repentance, as the incestuous Corinthian did: but when God shall say, Let such a man alone, let him take his course, I have done with him, and let my ministers trouble themselves no more about him, there is thenceforth but an inch between him and hell, which even gapes for him, where he shall rue it among reprobates. Well he may flourish a while, and feel no hurt; as Saul did not of many years after his rejection; and as the Pharisees, after Christ had said of them, "Let them alone, they are blind leaders of the blind," Mat 15:14; but they shall pine and swelter away in their iniquities, Lev 26:39, which is the last of those dismal plagues there, threatened; they shall not be purged till God s wrath hath rested upon them, Eze 24:13, so that now they may go and serve every one his idols, since they have such a mind to it, Eze 20:39, and since they have made a match with mischief, they may take their belly full of it. Oh let us fear, lest this should be any of our cases; that God should say, Let him alone, be is resolved of his way, and I of mine; he will have his swing in sin, and I am bent to have my full blow at him. "I am fully persuaded" (saith a reverend man, now with God) "that in these days of grace the Lord is much more quick and peremptory in rejecting men than heretofore: the time is shorter, neither will he wait so long as he used to do." See for ground of this, Heb 2:8, God is often quick in the offer of his mercy: Go and preach the gospel, saith Christ (go, and be quick: tell men what to trust to, that, as fools, they may not be semper victuri, always conquerers, ever about to be better, but never begin to set seriously to work), "He that believeth shall be saved, he that believeth not shall be damned": I shall not longer dally with him. "Destruction cometh, and they shall seek peace, and there shall be none. Mischief shall come upon mischief, and rumour upon rumour; then shall they seek a vision of the prophet; but the law shall perish from the priest, and counsel from the ancients," Eze 7:25-26; when men are even dropping into hell, and have a hell beforehand in their consciences, then they will send hastily for the minister, as they did in the sweating sickness here, so long as the ferventness of the plague lasted. Then the ministers were sought for in every corner, you must come to my lord, you must come to my lady, &c. But what if God had said of such a one, Let him alone, as he reproved Samuel for mourning for Saul, and as he forbade Jeremiah to pray for the Jews, and his apostles to take care for the Pharisees? Oh how dreadful is that man’s condition! and what can a minister say more than what the king of Israel said to the woman that complained to him of the scarcity of Samaria, "If the Lord help thee not, whence shall I help thee? out of the barnfloor, or out of the winepress?" 2Ki 6:27. If any dram of comfort be applied to a wicked man, the truth of God is falsified, and that minister will be reckoned among the devil’s dirt daubers and upholsterers, that daub with untempered mortar and sew pillows under men’s elbows, Eze 13:18. Let such alone, therefore, and let God alone to deal with them.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole1685 · Public DomainOn vv17–19The children of Ephraim were numerous and potent among…
The children of Ephraim were numerous and potent among the ten tribes, a principal part of them, and out of which tribe the first idolater and usurper did arise, 1Ki 11:26; and therefore the whole body of the ten tribes, and the rulers among them, are here particularly pointed at.
Is joined to idols; associated as friends to friends, or joined as lovers are joined to lovers; married to idols, and will not be taken off.
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Let him alone; he is indeed obstinately bent on his old courses, and as such throw him up; he will not return; let him wander, but let it be alone, O Judah, be not his companion, his friend, go not with him.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill1763 · Public DomainOn vv17–19Ephraim is joined to idols,.... That is, the ten…
Ephraim is joined to idols,.... That is, the ten tribes of Israel, frequently so called after their separation from the rest, because that Jeroboam, by whom the revolt was made, was of that tribe; and because that tribe was the principal of them, and Samaria, the metropolis of their kingdom, was in it: and so the Targum here renders it,
"the house of Israel are joined to idols;''
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to the calves at Dan and Bethel; to Baal, and other idols, they worshipped: the phrase expresses their strong affection for them, their constant worship of them, and their obstinate persisting therein, and the difficulty there was of bringing them off of it; they cleaved to their idols, were glued, and as it were wedded unto them, and there was no separating of them; as men are, who are addicted to the lusts of the flesh, to the mammon of unrighteousness, or to their own self-righteousness, or to any idol they set up in their hearts as such: hence it follows,
let them alone: which are either the words of the Lord to the prophet, enjoining him to prophesy no more to them; to reprove them no more for their sins, since it was all to no purpose, there was no reclaiming them, so Jarchi and Kimchi; and therefore let them alone, let them go on in their sins, and in their errors, and in their superstition and idolatry; see Eze 3:26. God was determined to let them alone himself, and therefore bids his prophet to do so likewise: and sad is the case with men when he lets them alone, and will not disturb their consciences any more by jogs and convictions, but gives them up to a seared conscience, to hardness of heart, and to their own lusts; when he will not hedge up their way with thorns, or distress them with afflictive providences, and hinder them from going on in a course of sin and wickedness; nor give them restraining grace, but suffer them to go on in the broad road, till they drop into hell; and says of them,
let him that is filthy be filthy still, Rev 22:11 or else they are the words of the prophet to the men of Judah, to have nothing to do with Israel, since they were such backsliders and idolaters; to have no communion and conversation with them, but let them be alone, and worship alone for them; since what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness, light with darkness, Christ with Belial, a believer with an infidel, or the temple of the living God with idols and idolaters? Co2 6:14, some take them to be the words of the prophet to God concerning Israel, approving of his righteous judgments, in threatening to feed them as a lamb in a large place; dismiss him thither, suffer and leave him to feed there. The Targum interprets it of their sin, and not their punishment,
"they have left their worship;''
the service of God.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley1765 · Public DomainOn vv17–19Ephraim - The children of Ephraim were numerous and…
Ephraim - The children of Ephraim were numerous and potent, and here put for the whole ten tribes. Let him alone - He is obstinate, as such, throw him up.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke1810 · Public DomainOn vv17–19Verse 17. Ephraim] The ten tribes.
Verse 17. Ephraim] The ten tribes.
Is joined to idols] Is become incorporated with false gods.
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Let him alone.] They are irreclaimable, leave them to the consequences of their vicious conduct.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson1811 · Public DomainOn vv17, 19Hos 4:17-18. Ephraim, &c. — The Ephraimites were numerous…
Hos 4:17-18. Ephraim, &c. — The Ephraimites were numerous and potent, and are here put for the whole ten tribes. Is joined to idols — The word עצבים, here rendered idols, properly means, sorrows and pains, idols being the cause of much misery to their worshippers. Bishop Horsley reads the verse, A companion of idols is Ephraim; leave him to himself. Leave him undisturbed in his idolatrous course. He is irreclaimable. Their drink is sour — Hebrew, is gone, turned, or vapid. “The allusion is to libations made with wine grown dead, or turning sour. The image represents the want of all spirit of piety in their acts of worship, and the unacceptableness of such worship in the sight of God; which is alleged as a reason for the determination, expressed in the preceding clause, to give Ephraim up to his own ways. ‘Leave him to himself,’ says God to the prophet, ‘his pretended devotions are all false and hypocritical. I desire none of them.’” — Horsley. They have committed whoredom continually. — They have gone on in a course of idolatry: or carnal whoredom may be intended. Her rulers with shame do love, Give ye — Their rulers, to their shame be it spoken, are continually asking or expecting bribes, or are greedy of gifts. The Hebrew word translated rulers, properly signifies shields: it is taken for rulers in Psa 47:9, as well as here.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes1834 · Public DomainOn vv17–19Ephraim is joined to idols - that is, banded,…
Ephraim is joined to idols - that is, banded, bound up with them, “associated,” as the word means, with them so as to cleave to them, willing neither to part with nor to be parted from, them. The idols are called by a name, denoting toils; with toil they were fashioned, and, when fashioned, they were a toil and grief.
Let him alone - Literally, give him rest, i. e., from all further expostulations, which he will not hear. It is an abandonment of Israel for the time, as in the prophet Ezekiel, “As for you, O house of Israel, thus saith the Lord God, go ye, serve ye every one his idols” Eze 20:39. Sinners often long not to be tormented by conscience or by God’s warnings. To be left so, is to be abandoned by God, as one whose case is desperate. God will not, while there is hope, leave a man to sleep in sin; for so the numbness of the soul increases, until, like those who fall asleep amid extreme cold of the body, it never awakes.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary1859 · Public DomainOn vv17–19Partaker. Hebrew, "tied to abominations." --- Alone. His case…
Partaker. Hebrew, "tied to abominations." --- Alone. His case is desperate. (Calmet) --- Septuagint, "he has placed stumbling-blocks for himself." (Haydock)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown1871 · Public DomainOn vv17–19Ephraim--the ten tribes. Judah was at this time not…
Ephraim--the ten tribes. Judah was at this time not so given to idolatry as afterwards.
joined to--closely and voluntarily; identifying themselves with them as a whoremonger becomes one flesh with the harlot (Num 25:3; Co1 6:16-17).
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idols--The Hebrew means also "sorrows," "pains," implying the pain which idolatry brings on its votaries.
let him alone--Leave him to himself. Let him reap the fruits of his own perverse choice; his case is desperate; say nothing to him (compare Jer 7:16). Here Hos 4:15 shows the address is to Judah, to avoid the contagion of Israel's bad example. He is bent on his own ruin; leave him to his fate, lest, instead of saving him, thou fall thyself (Isa 48:20; Jer 50:8; Jer 51:6, Jer 51:45; Co2 6:17).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon1874 · Public DomainOn v18Hos_4:18 is obscure; here, as elsewhere in 15-19, the…
Hos_4:18 is obscure; here, as elsewhere in 15-19, the correctness of the Hebrew text is open to question. The uncertainty is increased by the conflicting testimony of the ancient versions. Assuming that the Hebrew text is correct, the following appears to be the most probable interpretation:
Their drink is sour — Certainly an incorrect translation.
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Drink appears to be used in the sense of drinking, carousing (1Sa_1:14; 1Sa_25:37). The verb means is finished, is passed (1Sa_15:32); therefore R.V. margin is nearer the truth, “Their carouse is over.” The first two clauses of Hos_4:18 are thrown together without conjunction, due to the deep emotion of the prophet. The connection must be supplied and may be indicated thus: “When their carousing is over they play the harlot”; that is, when they grow weary of one form of sin they immediately plunge into another.
They have committed whoredom continually — The verb form describes a common practice, and would better be reproduced in the English by the present tense; so R.V., “they play the harlot continually.”
But this does not reproduce fully the force of the original. The emphasis is not upon the continuation, but upon the eagerness with which the immoralities are practiced; a better rendering would be, “they indulge in whoredom.”
Her rulers with shame do love, Give ye — R.V., “her rulers dearly love shame”; margin, “they are given up to love (impure love); her rulers are a shame,” while possible, is not so good. In the Hebrew three letters seem to be accidentally repeated; if they are omitted the text reads, “her rulers love shame”; a slight emendation would give the more emphatic reading of R.V.
Rulers — Literally, shields (Psa_47:9); the office of the rulers was to guard and shield the people. This they neglected to do; all they cared for were the shameful practices.
The section closes with an announcement of judgment, in Hos_4:19.
The wind hath bound [“wrapped”] her up in her [“its”] wings — The tense is the so-called prophetic perfect; the event is still future but imminent, and the prophet is sure of its occurrence. The figure expresses the suddenness and violence with which Israel will be swept away (Isa_59:19).
They shall be ashamed [“put to shame”] because of their sacrifices — Sacrifices, with an unusual plural ending in Hebrew, would stand for the religious cult in general; its corruption (11ff.) is the cause of the nation’s overthrow. Neither the margin, “their altars shall be put to shame” nor LXX., “they shall be put to shame because of their altars,” is as good. Hos_4:18-19 contain several linguistic peculiarities; the freedom in the use of the pronouns is unusual, and it is quite possible that the text of 11-19 has not been handed down in its original purity.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges1878 · Public DomainOn vv17–1917. joined to idols] The cognate noun is used…
17. joined to idols] The cognate noun is used in Mal_2:14 of a wife in her relation to her husband, and in Isa_44:11 of an idol-worshipper in his mystic relation to his god (comp. 1Co_10:20).
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers1878 · Public DomainOn vv17–18(17) Ephraim . . . idols.—The prophet calls on…
(17) Ephraim . . . idols.—The prophet calls on Judah to leave Ephraim to himself. The Jewish interpreters Rashi and Kimchi understand this as the appeal of Jehovah to the prophet to leave Israel to her fate, that so perhaps her eyes might be opened to discern her doom.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary1880 · Public DomainOn vv17–19Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone. Ephraim…
Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone. Ephraim being the dominant tribe, gave its name to the northern kingdom. The idols were Ephraim"s folly, and to that they were wedded; and in consequence they are left to their folly, and at the same time surrendered to their fate. They may persist in their folly; they cannot be prevented. "Give him rest," as the words literally mean, from exhortations and expostulations, from remonstrances and reproofs; he will persist in his folly, prepare for his fate, and perish by his sin. This abandonment of Ephraim proves the desperate nature of his case. Left to his own recklessness, he is rushing towards ruin. Judah is warned to stand aloof from the contagion, lest by interference he might get implicated in the sin and involved in the punishment of Ephraim. The Hebrew commentators express the word rendered joined to" in the Authorized Version (ver. 17) by words importing yoked to," "allied with," and cleaving to." Again, hnh, imperative of jnihe, is explained by them as follows: Rashi: "Leave off, O prophet, and prophesy not to reprove him, for it is of no use." Aben Ezra: "Let him alone till God shall chastise him; perhaps his eyes shall then open." Kimchi: "Jehovah says to the prophet, Cease to reprove him, for it is of no use .... As a man who is angry with his fellow, because he will not hearken to him when he reproves him, and says, Since thou hearkenest not to me, I will cease for ever to reprove thee.
HOMILIES BY A. ROWLAND Ver. 17. Insensibility the result of impenitence.
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The people of Israel are here designated by the name "Ephraim." This tribe rapidly rose to influence beneath the shadow of Joshua"s greatness. Under that hero, one of its greatest sons, Ephraim was located in the most fertile part of Palestine, and being less exposed than other tribes to external attack, grew in numbers and affluence. When another Ephraimite, Jeroboam, led the revolt against the house of David, and became the first king of Israel, this tribe, already strong, stood foremost, and its name became henceforth a synonym for Israel. In this chapter Hoses exhibits the sins of the people in a series of graphic pictures. He tacitly asks whether they had anything to urge in stay of judgment. He would prove to their own consciences the righteousness of the Divine decision, so that they would be left without excuse. There ever comes from the throne of God, as once there came from Mount Sinai, a voice which appeals to human conscience to confirm the Divine sentence: "Let all the people say, Amen!" Our text exhibits a nation abandoned by God to whom all expostulation bad proved useless. It suggests a moral condition similar to the physical condition of some patient on whom the surgeon has operated again and again; who has often pleaded to be left alone, and from whom at last, with heavy heart, the skilful kindly friend turns away, saying, "It is best that he should be left alone now, for his disease is fatal." That Divine abandonment is possible may be shown from Jer_6:30, compared with Mat_5:13. At times God seems to reply to man"s wish by an echo. (compare Job_21:14 with Mat_25:41) The solemnity of the fact that insensibility follows impenitence .
I THE WICKEDNESS OF IDOLATRY. "Joined to idols" implies vital association with them. Ephraim would not part with idols, and could not be parted from them without death. Three forms of idolatry prevailed. Each appealed to a distinct section of the people, and all alike drew their hearts from God. The calves introduced by Jeroboam from Egypt were deification of "nature," and became at Gilgal and Bethel centers for political and national gatherings. Baal, the sun-god, was a deification of "power," and was worshiped in mountains and high places. Ashtaroth, the Astarte of the Greeks, the Venus of the Romans, was worshiped in the groves, under the shadow of which hideously licentious rites completed the degradation of the people. Each had its own cults and its own worshipers. We all recognize that an idol may exist in our thought as well as in our sight. The essence of idolatry is the preference of anything to God, so as to allow it to take the place he should fill in our thoughts and affections. The same object does not tempt us all, nor will the same allure us in all the stages of our life. In youth you may worship Astarte; in manhood, Baal; and in old age, the golden calves. Speak of forms of idolatry prevalent in England.
1. The idolatry of wealth. We do not allude to the gaining of money, which is possible to a man who wins it by his shrewdness and skill, by his industry and probity in business. The Lord has given him power to get wealth, which he uses as a steward for God. Describe one who makes money-getting the object of life. lie chooses a business, without any care about its evil associations. He steels his heart to misery and to the claims of his own kin. He ignores the standard of integrity which an enlightened conscience sets up. If advantage is to be gained by bribe or trick, he is not the man to lose it from scrupulousness. He has no time for home duties, for Church work, etc., which claim his efforts. In brief, he dismisses, and feels that he must dismiss, God from his plans; and as the habit grows he becomes "joined to idols," and in his avaricious hardness God lets him alone.
2. The idolatry of pleasure is not extinct. Picture a young girl introduced to society, in whose gaieties she henceforth finds herself entangled. Simple of heart as she is fair of face, she is insidiously injured by the unwholesome excitement, the late hours, the inane and profitless chit-chat of such an existence. Too tired to pray, too flattered to conquer self, she forgets those solemn realities to which the present life is only a vestibule, until in the scales of Eternal Justice she is "weighed in the balances and found wanting." Slowly but surely her early sensibility decreases; and she whose heart was once easily touched, whose conscience was keenly sensitive, becomes the hardened, scheming woman of the world. She is joined to idols: let her alone.
3. The idolatry of sensuousness. The halls of entertainment in which the lusts of the flesh and of the eye are pandered to are thronged nightly by lads whose incipient manliness becomes deteriorated. There, and elsewhere, drink exercises a fatal influence. Short of intoxication, the will is weakened, the memory obscured, the imagination so excited as to find pleasure where otherwise there would be none; and so the first step to ruin is often taken half consciously. Little by little the power of drink asserts itself, till self-control is gone, and its victim cannot live without it; and so joined to idols is he that God says, "Let him alone." In these as in similar temptations many resent holy influence till they cannot feel it; they are "twice dead," "given over to a reprobate mind.
II THE WOEFULNESS OF INSENSIBILITY.
1. Its nature. "Let him alone," is God"s command to all who have been speaking in his name, the prophet being their representative. A minister preaches, and many under the influence of the truth are moved to thought and penitence. One hears as others do, but, unlike them, is hard and callous. Often has he said to himself, "I wish I could go to a place of worship without feeling uneasy;" and at last God says," You shall. Ministers, let him alone!" Friends spoke faithfully to another, urging him to prayer, pleading with him, even with tears, to turn from sin. Sometimes he laughed at their anxiety, sometimes he was angry, at their interference, heartily wishing that they would interfere with him no more. Now they do not. One friend has removed to a distance, the voice of another is stilled by death, and another has given up further effort in utter despair of success. God has said, "Let him alone." Solemn events once stirred to thought, but now their influence is gone. The voice within which warned and entreated is sensibly weaker and less frequently heard. To conscience God has said," Let him alone," and now it is sleeping.
2. The dreadfulness of this condition is seen in the fact that the noblest art of man is gone. Suppose your hand was injured so that you were in pain night and day. Driven to desperation, you take a red-hot iron and sear the flesh, destroying nerves and tissue ruthlessly. The sore heals, the pain is gone. Ay, but the band is useless, and nothing can restore it. So may you deal with conscience. Refusing to go to the good Physician when conscious of your peril, you sin deliberately against God, and thus conscience may be "seared as with a hot iron." Note, also, the ominousness of being left alone. We see all the trees in an orchard pruned with an unsparing yet skillful hand, and are told that they will be the more vigorous and fruitful in the autumn, One tree, however, has been left untouched by the knife. Why? Is it because it is a favorite? You see the answer in the red cross on its trunk, which shows that it is marked for cutting down as a cumberer of the ground. Take another illustration. Two prisoners are convicted of offenses against the law. The one, on the ground of his youth and possible reformation, is sent home for his father to chastise, and he goes weeping. The other, a hardened criminal, is to receive no stripes, but may have anything his appetite craves. Yet all look on him with horror. The fact that he is to receive no chastisement is ominous; for he is under condemnation of death. That you are so little troubled by serious thought is no sign of safety; it may be the indication that soon, "being past feeling," you will be "given over to a reprobate mind." "Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
CONCLUSION.
1. Address those who fear they are left alone. If the faint desire to return to God yet lingers, if the fear of being forsaken of God makes you tremble, the curse has not yet fallen. The Lord, who is very pitiful and of tender mercy, still says, "Come now, and let us reason together," etc.
2. Address those in danger of being abandoned. Illustrate their position by the story of two brothers crossing a pass, overtaken by a snow-storm. One longs to sleep. He is dragged on for a time by physical force, is pleaded with earnestly, but at last is of necessity left. He sinks to rest; the snowflakes fall silently and swiftly, and in the depths he finds his grave, and sleeps the sleep of death. You may say to all good influences, "Let me alone," until God puts his seal on your choice, and says to all that might save you, "Let him alone. A.R.
An unholy alliance and a righteous abandonment.
"Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone." "Ephraim," the most powerful of the ten tribes, is frequently used by the prophets for Israel. Notice briefly two things.
I AN UNHOLY ALLIANCE. Ephraim is joined to idols," is welded to them; his heart is rooted in them. What is an idol? Carved wood, stone, or molded metal, living creatures, flowing streams, or heavenly orbs? No. These are mere representations of idols. The idol of a man is the object supremely loved, whatever that object may be. Gold, fame, beauty, power, pleasure, whatever the heart is set on, that is the idol. Here in our England we condemn polytheism, but we abound with polytheists. Men have as many idols here as they have objects of supreme love, and they are many. Thousands of Englishmen are joined to their idols; they are chained to them by the ties of their strongest loves and habits.
II A RIGHTEOUS ABANDONMENT. "Let him alone." It is a hopeless case. Waste no more time in argument and moral appliances. The times comes with every sinner when he is abandoned, his character is stereotyped, and his doom is settled. God says to providence, "Let him alone do not disturb him; to conscience, Let him alone;" to the Spirit," Let him alone." When God abandons the soul, all is over; when the fountain refuses to pour forth its waters, the stream dries up; when the sun refuses to travel up the horizon, all nature will die. D.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator1887 · Public DomainOn vv17, 19Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone.
Hos_4:17
Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone.
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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 (Hos_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. Gods 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 Gods 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, Gods 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 Gods time of patience will have an end.
I. Ephraims 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 Solomons 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. Ephraims 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 Gods 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 Gods 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 Masters 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, Gods 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 Gods 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 Gods 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 prophets 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 (Gen_6:3; 1Pe_3:18-20; 1Sa_28:15; Luk_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 (Hos_2:14-23; Hos_5:15; Hos_6:1-3; Hos_10:12; Hos_11:1-9; Hos_12:1-14).
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 (Hos_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 Ephraims associate. Partake not Ephraims sins, lest ye partake Ephraims 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 (1Jn_2:15-17; 2Co_6:14-18). 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 Gods 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. Ephraims 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 mens 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 Nebuchadnezzars, 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 ones 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 souls 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. Ephraims 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 Gods 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 sinners state. Let him alone is the burning inscription on the walls of hells 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 Israels 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 Gods 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 Gods 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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The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary1892 · Public DomainOn v18Hos_4:18. Sour] A metaphor for degeneracy in principle (Isa_1:22);…
CRITICAL NOTES.—
Hos_4:18. Sour] A metaphor for degeneracy in principle (Isa_1:22); turned, as we say of milk. They had lost all their life and taste of goodness [Pusey]. Rulers] Lit. shields, protectors, and supporters of the state. Love] Avarice and luxury. No remedy against corruption when rulers are bribed.
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Hos_4:19. Bound her up] A tempest will suddenly and violently seize them, wrap them up, and carry them away (Psa_18:11; Psa_104:3; Isa_57:13). Ashamed] of idols and disappointed in hope. Disappointment is certain to those who seek out of God what can only be found in him.
HOMILETICS
THE BITTERNESS AND THE PUNISHMENT OF SIN.—Hos_4:18-19
In these verses we have another triplet of vice. The people are guilty of intemperance and adultery. The princes and leaders are covetous, pervert justice, and cry, “Give, give.” The whole nation had become sapless and corrupt. “Drink” is here put for the effect of sweet intoxicating wine. As sourness was opposed to sweetness, so sin is opposed to holiness and idolatry to the service of God. The verses set forth the bitterness and the punishment of sin.
I. The Bitterness of Sin. “Their drink is sour,” their delights are insipid and dead. Man’s spiritual appetite is strong, and God has made abundant provision for our happiness. But men indulge in sin, are not satisfied with healthful refreshment, and “add drunkenness to thirst.” The appetite, cloyed with indulgence, turns with disgust from the sweetest dainties, while “every bitter thing is sweet” to the hungry soul (Pro_27:7). So in spiritual things. The sinner has no relish, and feels no need for the bread of life. He seeks to quench his thirst by intoxicating pleasure or sensual indulgence. This may make him merry, but cannot make him happy. Whatever be the relish and allurements of sin, “at the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder.” There is poison in the cup. Like the little book which the Apostle John had to take, sin is sweet as honey in the mouth, but when committed, bitter in the belly (Rev_10:9). “Life, they say, is sweet; I have found it bitter,” said a young artist in the closing scenes of death. Lord Chesterfield echoed the sentiment, when he said, “I have run the silly rounds of business and of pleasure, and have done with them all. I have enjoyed all the pleasures of the world and know their futility, and do not regret their loss. I appraise them at their real value, which is very low; whereas those who have not experienced them always overrate them. They only see the gay outside, and are dazzled with their glare; but I have been behind the scenes. I look back on all that is passed as one of those romantic dreams which opium commonly produces, and I have no wish to repeat the nauseous dose.” This Marah is never dry. No art can sweeten, no draughts exhaust its perennial waters of bitterness. The bitterness of sin consists—
1. In its wretchedness. Byron described himself as a man whose happiness was gone and could not be restored. “If I were to live over again,” he writes, “I do not know what I would change in my life, except not to have lived at all.”
2. In its dissatisfaction. After all toil and labour “the good” is ever absent. The thing which was expected to give joy palls on the instant it is obtained, like the apples of the Dead Sea, which turn to ashes when tasted. On and on! the spirit still cries, “Give, give.”
3. In its disappointment. Solomon had tried everything, but unalloyed happiness was still beyond his grasp. He drank from broken cisterns, tasted the wormwood and the gall, and gives the verdict—“All was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.”
II. The Punishment of Sin. “The wind hath bound her up in her wings.” The simple meaning of this is that they would be carried away with a swift and shameful destruction. So sudden is the overthrow of the wicked, that his designs are baffled, his life upset, and he himself overwhelmed with the tempest. “He shall take them away as with a whirlwind.”
1. This destruction is sudden. The wind may sleep and be forgotten, but justice never fails. The sky is clear, men settle down, and undisturbed pursue their folly; but “when they shall say peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them.” In their revelries they will be surprised, and, like Belshazzar, “they shall not escape.”
2. This destruction is violent. What more violent than mighty winds tearing up the mountains and rending the rocks (Job_28:9). The wicked cannot stand before the tempest of God’s wrath and the thunder of his power. Cambyses, invading Ethiopia, sent a detachment to ravage the country. Herodotus says that “after they had left Oasis, they halted to take some repast, when a strong south wind arose and overwhelmed them beneath a mountain of sand.” Plutarch, in the Life, speaking of the design of Alexander “to visit the temple of Jupiter Ammon,” adds, “it was a long and laborious journey, and they might be surprised by a violent south wind amidst the wastes of sand, as it happened long before to the army of Cambyses. The wind raised the sand, and rolled it in such waves, that it devoured full 50,000 men.”
3. This destruction is shameful. “They shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices.” Ashamed on account of their sacrifices, or of them, and should forsake them and turn to God. But in any case both they and their sacrifices would be put to shame. (a) They would be disappointed in their sacrifices. They had brought nothing but evil, and not any good. Nothing good should be sought, or can be found, away from God. (b) They would be detected on hill and in dale, in public and private worship. They could not hide their shameful ways from God. Justice would discover them. “As the thief is ashamed when he is found, so is the house of Israel ashamed.” (c) They would be exposed in their shame. Exposed without refuge to Divine judgment. Shame and confusion of face will be the final issue of all the lofty expectations and the sinful ways of the ungodly. Shame is their present fruit, and what will be the results in eternity “of those things whereof ye are now ashamed?” “Many that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake; some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” Avoid the guilt if you wish to escape the doom of Israel.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 4
Hos_4:18-19. Pleasure taken into the soul is like liquor poured into a vessel so much of it as it fills it also seasons, the touch and the tincture go together. It is certain sin has no real pleasures to be stow; they are all embittered, either by the strokes of providence from without, or the accusations of conscience from within. The fine colours of the serpent do by no means make amends for the smart and poison of his sting.
Penalties are often so long delayed, that men think they shall escape them; but they are certain to follow. When the whirlwind sweeps through the forest, at its first breath that giant tree, with all its boughs, falls crashing to the ground. But it had been preparing to fall twenty years. Twenty years before it received a gash, the water commenced to settle in it at some notch, and from thence decay began to reach in towards the heart of the tree. Every year the work of death progressed, till at length it stood all rottenness, and the first gale felled it to the ground. There are men, who for twenty years shame the day and the night with debaucheries, who yet seem strong and vigorous, but in reality are full of weakness and decay. They have been preparing to fall, and the first storm will strike them down in a moment [Beecher].
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren1905 · Public DomainOn v17
Hosea
‘LET HIM ALONE’
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Hos 4:17.
The tribe of Ephraim was the most important member of the kingdom of Israel; consequently its name was not unnaturally sometimes used in a wider application for the whole of the kingdom, of which it was the principal part. Being the ‘predominant partner,’ its name was used alone for that of the whole firm, just as in our own empire, we often say ‘England,’ meaning thereby the three kingdoms: England, Scotland, and Ireland. So ‘Ephraim’ here does not mean the single tribe, but the whole kingdom of Israel.
Now Hosea himself was a Northerner, a subject of that kingdom; and its iniquities and idolatries weighed heavily on his heart, and were ripped up and brought to light with burning eloquence in his prophecies. The words of my text have often, and terribly, been misunderstood. And I wish now to try to bring out their true meaning and bearing. They have a message for us quite as much as they had for the people who originally received them.
I. I must begin by explaining what, in my judgment, this text does not mean.
First, it is not what it is often taken to be, a threatening of God’s abandoning of the idolatrous nation. I dare say we have all heard grim sermons from this text, which have taken that view of it, and have tried to frighten men into believing now, by telling them that, perhaps, if they do not, God will never move on their hearts, or deal with them any more, but withdraw His grace, and leave them to insensibility. There is not a word of that sort in the text. Plainly enough it is not so, for this vehement utterance of the Prophet is not a declaration as to God, and what He is going to do, but it is a commandment to some men, telling them what they are to do. ‘Let him alone’ does not mean the same thing as ‘I will let him alone’; and if people had only read with a little more care, they would have been delivered from perpetrating a libel on the divine loving-kindness and forbearance.
It is clear enough, too, that such a meaning as that which has been forced upon the words of my text, and is the common use of it, I believe, in many evangelical circles, cannot be its real meaning, because the very fact that Hosea was prophesying to call Ephraim from his sin showed that God had not let Ephraim alone, but was wooing him by His prophet, and seeking to win him back by the words of his mouth. God was doing all that He could do, rising early and sending His messenger and calling to Ephraim: ‘Turn ye! Turn ye! why will ye die?’ For Hosea, in the very act of pleading with Israel on God’s behalf, to have declared that God had abandoned it, and ceased to plead, would have been a palpable absurdity and contradiction.
But beyond considerations of the context, other reasons conclusively negative such an interpretation of this text. I, for my part, do not believe that there are any bounds or end to God’s forbearing pleading with men in this life. I take, as true, the great words of the old Psalm, in their simplest sense-’His mercy endureth for ever’; and I fall back upon the other words which a penitent had learned to be true by reflecting on the greatness of his own sin: ‘With Him are multitudes of redemptions’; and I turn from psalmists and prophets to the Master who showed us God’s heart, and knew what He spake when He laid it down as the law and the measure of human forgiveness which was moulded upon the pattern of the divine, that it should be ‘seventy times seven’-the multiplication of both the perfect numbers into themselves-than which there can be no grander expression for absolute innumerableness and unfailing continuance.
No, no! men may say to God, ‘Speak no more to us’; or they may get so far away from Him, as that they only hear God’s pleading voice, dim and faint, like a voice in a dream. But surely the history of His progressive revelation shows us that, rather than such abandonment of the worst, the law of the divine dealing is that the deafer the man, the more piercing the voice beseeching and warning. The attraction of gravitation decreases as distance increases, but the further away we are from Him, the stronger is the attraction which issues from Him, and would draw us to Himself.
Clear away, then, altogether out of your minds any notion that there is here declared what, in my judgment, is not declared anywhere in the Bible, and never occurs in the divine dealings with men. Be sure that He never ceases to seek to draw the most obstinate, idolatrous, and rebellious heart to Himself. That divine charity ‘suffereth long, and is kind’ . . . ‘hopeth all things, and beareth all things.’
Again, let me point out that the words of my text do not enjoin the cessation of the efforts of Christian people for the recovery of the most deeply sunken in sin. ‘Let him alone’ is a commandment, and it is a commandment to God’s Church, but it is not a commandment to despair of any that they may be brought into the fold, or to give up efforts to that end. If our Father in heaven never ceases to bear in His heart His prodigal children, it does not become those prodigals, who have come back, to think that any of their brethren are too far away to be drawn by their loving proclamation of the Father’s heart of love.
There is the glory of our Gospel, that, taking far sadder, graver views of what sin and alienation from God are, than the world’s philosophers and philanthropists do, it surpasses them just as much as in the superb confidence with which it sets itself to the cure of the disease as in the unflinching clearness with which it diagnoses the disease as fatal, if it be not dealt with by the all-healing Gospel. All other methods for the restoration and elevation of mankind are compelled to recognise that there is an obstinate residuum that will not and cannot be reached by their efforts. It used to be said that some old cannon-balls, that had been brought from some of the battlefields of the Peninsula, resisted all attempts to melt them down; so there are ‘cannon-balls,’ as it were, amongst the obstinate evil-doers, and the degraded and ‘dangerous’ classes, which mark the despair of our modern reformers and civilisers and elevators, for no fire in their furnaces can melt down their hardness. No; but there is the furnace of the Lord in Jerusalem, and the fire of God in Zion, which can melt them down, and has done so a hundred and a thousand times, and is as able to do it again to-day as it ever was. Despair of no human soul. That boundless confidence in the power of the Gospel is the duty of the Christian Church. ‘The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth!’ They laughed Him to scorn, knowing that she was dead. But He put out His hand, and said unto her ‘Talitha cumi, I say unto thee, Arise!’ When we stand on one side of the bed with your social reformers on the other, and say ‘The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth,’ they laugh us to scorn, and bid us try our Gospel upon these people in our slums, or on those heathens in the New Hebrides. We have the right to answer, ‘We have tried it, and man after man, and woman after woman have risen from the sick-bed, like Peter’s wife’s mother; and the fever has left them, and they have ministered unto Him. There are no people in the world about whom Christians need despair, none that Christ’s Gospel cannot redeem. Whatever my text means, it does not mean cowardly and unbelieving doubt as to the power of the Gospel on the most degraded and sinful.
II. So, the text enjoins on the Christian Church separation from an idolatrous world.
‘Ephraim is joined to idols.’ Do you ‘let him alone.’ Now, there has been much harm done by misreading the force of the injunction of separation from the world. There is a great deal of union and association with the most godless people in our circle, which is inevitable. Family bonds, business connections, civic obligations-all these require that the Church shall not withdraw from the world. There is the wide common ground of Politics and Art and Literature, and a hundred other interests, on which it does Christian men no good, and the world much harm, if the former withdraw to themselves, and on the plea of superior sanctity, leave these great departments of interest and influence to be occupied only by non-Christians.
Then, besides these thoughts of necessary union and association upon common ground, there is the other consideration that absolute separation would defeat the very purpose for which Christian people are here. ‘Ye are the salt of the earth,’ said Christ. Yes, and if you keep the meat on one plate and the salt on another, what good will the salt be? It has to be rubbed in particle by particle, and brought into contact over all the surface, and down into the depths of the meat that it is to preserve from putrefaction. And no Christian churches or individuals do their duty, and fulfil their function on earth, unless they are thus closely associated and intermingled with the world that they should be trying to leaven and save. A cloistered solitude, or a proud standing apart from the ordinary movements of the community, or a neglect, on the plea of our higher duties, of the duties of the citizen of a free country-these are not the ways to fulfil the exhortation of my text. ‘Let the dead bury their dead,’ said Christ; but He did not mean that His Church was to stand apart from the world, and let it go its own way. It is a bad thing for both when little Christian c?ies gather themselves together, and talk about their own goodness and religion, and leave the world to perish. Clotted blood is death; circulated, it is life.
But, whilst all this is perfectly true-and there are associations that we must not break if we are to do our work as Christian people-it is also true that it is possible, in the closest unions with men who do not share our faith, to do the same thing that they are doing, with a difference which separates us from them, even whilst we are united with them. They tell us that, however dense any material substance may seem to be, there is always a film of air between contiguous particles. And there should be a film between us and our Christless friends and companions and partners, not perceptible perhaps to a superficial observer, but most real. If we do our common work as a religious duty, and in the exercise of all our daily occupations ‘set the Lord always before’ us, however closely we may be associated with people who do not so live, they will know the difference; never fear! And you will know the difference, and will not be identified with them, but separate in a wholesome fashion from them.
And, dear brethren, if I may go a step further, I would venture to say that it seems to me that our Christian communities want few things more in this day than the reiteration of the old saying, ‘Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.’ There is so much in this time to break down the separation between him that believeth in Christ and him that doth not; narrowness has come to be thought such an enormous wickedness, and liberality is so lauded by all sorts of superficial people, that Christian men need to be summoned back to their standard. ‘Being let go, they went to their own company’-there is a natural affinity which should, and will, if our faith is vital, draw us to those who, on the gravest and solemnest things, have the same thoughts, the same hopes, the same faith. I do not urge you, God knows, to be bigoted and narrow, and shut yourselves up in your faith, and leave the world to go to the devil; but I do not wish, either, that Christian people should fling themselves into the arms and nestle in the hearts of persons who do not share with them ‘like precious faith.’
I am sure that there are many Christian people, old and young, who are suffering in their religious life because they are neglecting this commandment of my text. ‘Let him alone.’ There can be no deep affection, and, most of all-if I may venture on such ground-no wedded love worth the name, where there is not unanimity in regard to the deepest matters. It does not say much for the religion of a professing Christian who finds his heart’s friends and his chosen companions in people that have no sympathy with the religion which he professes. It does not say much for you if it is so with you, for the Christian, whom you like least, is nearer you in the depths of your true self than is the non-Christian whom you love most.
Be sure, too, that if we mix ourselves up with Ephraim, we shall find ourselves grovelling beside him before his idols ere long. Godlessness is infectious. Many a young woman, a professing Christian, has married a godless man in the fond hope that she might win him. It is a great deal more frequently the case that he perverts her than that she converts him. Do not let us knit ourselves in these close bonds with the worshippers of idols, lest we ‘learn their ways, and get a snare into our souls.’ ‘Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers. What fellowship hath light with darkness? Wherefore, come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord. Touch not the unclean thing, and I will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and My daughters.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0On v17General Information:
General Information:
Yahweh is talking about Israel.
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Ephraim united himself with idols; leave him alone
Here "Ephraim" represents the whole northern kingdom of Israel, which is a metonym for the people who live there. They chose to worship idols, instead of Yahweh. Yahweh is commanding Hosea to not try to correct them. The people of Israel will not listen. (See: Synecdoche and Metonymy)
her rulers dearly love their shame
The rulers are not ashamed of what they are doing when they worship idols and turn against Yahweh.
The wind will wrap her up in its wings
Here "wind" represents God's judgment and anger against the nation of Israel. Yahweh will allow the enemy army to defeat the people of Israel and take them as captives. (See: Metaphor and Metonymy)
GEBible — Godless Engineer's Bible App
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv17–19 As if wearied, God here bids his Prophet to…
As if wearied, God here bids his Prophet to rest; as though he said, “Since I prevail nothing with this people, they must be given up; cease from thy work.” God had set Hosea over the Israelites for this end, to lead them to repentance, if they could by any means be reformed: the duty of the Prophet, enjoined by God, was, to bring back miserable and straying men from their error, and to restore them again to the obedience of pure faith. He now saw that the Prophet’s labour was in vain, without any success. Hence he was, as I have said, wearied, and bids the Prophet to desist: Leave them, he says; that is, “There is no use for thee to weary thyself any more; I dismiss thee from thy labour, and will not have thee to take any more trouble; for they are wholly incurable.” For by saying that they had joined themselves to idols, he means, that they could not be drawn from that perverseness in which they had grown hardened; as though he said, “This is an alliance that cannot be broken.” And he alludes to the marriage which he had before mentioned: for the Israelites, we know, had been joined to God, for he had adopted them to be a holy people to himself; they afterwards adopted impious forms of worship. But yet there was a hope of recovery, until they became wholly attached to their idols, and clave so fast to them, that they could not be drawn away. This alliance the Prophet points out when he says, They are joined to idols
But he mentions the tribe of Ephraim, for the kings, (I mean, of Israel,) we know, sprang from that tribe; and at the same time he reproaches that tribe for having abused God’s blessing. We know that Ephraim was blessed by holy Jacob in preference to his elder brother; and yet there was no reason why Jacob put aside the first-born and preferred the younger, except that God in this case manifested his own good pleasure. The ingratitude of Ephraim was therefore less excusable, when he not only fell away from the pure worship of God, but polluted also the whole land; for it was Jeroboam who introduced ungodly superstitions; he therefore was the source of all the evil. This is the reason why the Prophet now expressly mentions Ephraim: though it is a form of speaking, commonly used by all the Prophets, to designate Israel, by taking a part for the whole, by the name of Ephraim.
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But this passage is worthy of being noticed, that we may attend to God’s reproofs, and not remain torpid when he rouses us; for we ought ever to fear, lest he should suddenly reject us, when he is wearied with our perverseness, or when he conceives such a displeasure as not to deign to speak to us any more. It follows —
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv18–19 They are so impudent in receiving bribes, that they…
They are so impudent in receiving bribes, that they will command men to bring them unto them.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv17–19 Hos 4:17 Ephraim [is] joined to idols: let him…
Hos 4:17 Ephraim [is] joined to idols: let him alone.
Ver. 17. Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone] Ephraim, that is, the ten revolted tribes, who are called Ephraim in opposition to Judah: 1. Because that tribe was the greatest of the ten; 2. Jeroboam, the ringleader of that revolt, was of that tribe; 3. They rebelled at Shechem, which was in that tribe, and from thenceforth was joined or glued to idols, as the fornicator is to his harlot, with whom he becometh one flesh, and from whom there is no dissuading him. Some fetch the metaphor from enchanters; who by their conjuring art have society and fellowship with the devils; so had Ephraim with idols; and like an enchanted person, he could not stir from them, but stood fastened to them as to a stock or stake. The Tyrians, when besieged by Alexander, fearing the departure of their god Apollo from them, laid chains upon his statue, and fastened him to his temple. Ephraim was so fastened to his idols ( terriculis so Junius renders this text) that there is no likelihood of his being sundered from them: he had taken fast hold of deceit, Jer 8:5, and would not loose his hold. Let him alone, therefore, saith either God to the prophet (lay out no more words, lose no more labour upon him) or the prophet to Judah; let them even go, have nothing to do with them, though they be your brethren, meddle not with them; let Christ alone, to deal with them at his coming: Maranatha, the Lord cometh. Meanwhile, they lie under a dreadful spiritual judgment, worse than all the plagues of Egypt; even a dead and dedolent disposition, whereunto they are delivered. This is worse than to be delivered to Satan: for so a man may be, and recover out of his snare by repentance, as the incestuous Corinthian did: but when God shall say, Let such a man alone, let him take his course, I have done with him, and let my ministers trouble themselves no more about him, there is thenceforth but an inch between him and hell, which even gapes for him, where he shall rue it among reprobates. Well he may flourish a while, and feel no hurt; as Saul did not of many years after his rejection; and as the Pharisees, after Christ had said of them, "Let them alone, they are blind leaders of the blind," Mat 15:14; but they shall pine and swelter away in their iniquities, Lev 26:39, which is the last of those dismal plagues there, threatened; they shall not be purged till God s wrath hath rested upon them, Eze 24:13, so that now they may go and serve every one his idols, since they have such a mind to it, Eze 20:39, and since they have made a match with mischief, they may take their belly full of it. Oh let us fear, lest this should be any of our cases; that God should say, Let him alone, be is resolved of his way, and I of mine; he will have his swing in sin, and I am bent to have my full blow at him. "I am fully persuaded" (saith a reverend man, now with God) "that in these days of grace the Lord is much more quick and peremptory in rejecting men than heretofore: the time is shorter, neither will he wait so long as he used to do." See for ground of this, Heb 2:8, God is often quick in the offer of his mercy: Go and preach the gospel, saith Christ (go, and be quick: tell men what to trust to, that, as fools, they may not be semper victuri, always conquerers, ever about to be better, but never begin to set seriously to work), "He that believeth shall be saved, he that believeth not shall be damned": I shall not longer dally with him. "Destruction cometh, and they shall seek peace, and there shall be none. Mischief shall come upon mischief, and rumour upon rumour; then shall they seek a vision of the prophet; but the law shall perish from the priest, and counsel from the ancients," Eze 7:25-26; when men are even dropping into hell, and have a hell beforehand in their consciences, then they will send hastily for the minister, as they did in the sweating sickness here, so long as the ferventness of the plague lasted. Then the ministers were sought for in every corner, you must come to my lord, you must come to my lady, &c. But what if God had said of such a one, Let him alone, as he reproved Samuel for mourning for Saul, and as he forbade Jeremiah to pray for the Jews, and his apostles to take care for the Pharisees? Oh how dreadful is that man’s condition! and what can a minister say more than what the king of Israel said to the woman that complained to him of the scarcity of Samaria, "If the Lord help thee not, whence shall I help thee? out of the barnfloor, or out of the winepress?" 2Ki 6:27. If any dram of comfort be applied to a wicked man, the truth of God is falsified, and that minister will be reckoned among the devil’s dirt daubers and upholsterers, that daub with untempered mortar and sew pillows under men’s elbows, Eze 13:18. Let such alone, therefore, and let God alone to deal with them.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv17–19 The children of Ephraim were numerous and potent among…
The children of Ephraim were numerous and potent among the ten tribes, a principal part of them, and out of which tribe the first idolater and usurper did arise, 1Ki 11:26; and therefore the whole body of the ten tribes, and the rulers among them, are here particularly pointed at.
Is joined to idols; associated as friends to friends, or joined as lovers are joined to lovers; married to idols, and will not be taken off.
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Let him alone; he is indeed obstinately bent on his old courses, and as such throw him up; he will not return; let him wander, but let it be alone, O Judah, be not his companion, his friend, go not with him.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv17–19 Ephraim is joined to idols,.... That is, the ten…
Ephraim is joined to idols,.... That is, the ten tribes of Israel, frequently so called after their separation from the rest, because that Jeroboam, by whom the revolt was made, was of that tribe; and because that tribe was the principal of them, and Samaria, the metropolis of their kingdom, was in it: and so the Targum here renders it,
"the house of Israel are joined to idols;''
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to the calves at Dan and Bethel; to Baal, and other idols, they worshipped: the phrase expresses their strong affection for them, their constant worship of them, and their obstinate persisting therein, and the difficulty there was of bringing them off of it; they cleaved to their idols, were glued, and as it were wedded unto them, and there was no separating of them; as men are, who are addicted to the lusts of the flesh, to the mammon of unrighteousness, or to their own self-righteousness, or to any idol they set up in their hearts as such: hence it follows,
let them alone: which are either the words of the Lord to the prophet, enjoining him to prophesy no more to them; to reprove them no more for their sins, since it was all to no purpose, there was no reclaiming them, so Jarchi and Kimchi; and therefore let them alone, let them go on in their sins, and in their errors, and in their superstition and idolatry; see Eze 3:26. God was determined to let them alone himself, and therefore bids his prophet to do so likewise: and sad is the case with men when he lets them alone, and will not disturb their consciences any more by jogs and convictions, but gives them up to a seared conscience, to hardness of heart, and to their own lusts; when he will not hedge up their way with thorns, or distress them with afflictive providences, and hinder them from going on in a course of sin and wickedness; nor give them restraining grace, but suffer them to go on in the broad road, till they drop into hell; and says of them,
let him that is filthy be filthy still, Rev 22:11 or else they are the words of the prophet to the men of Judah, to have nothing to do with Israel, since they were such backsliders and idolaters; to have no communion and conversation with them, but let them be alone, and worship alone for them; since what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness, light with darkness, Christ with Belial, a believer with an infidel, or the temple of the living God with idols and idolaters? Co2 6:14, some take them to be the words of the prophet to God concerning Israel, approving of his righteous judgments, in threatening to feed them as a lamb in a large place; dismiss him thither, suffer and leave him to feed there. The Targum interprets it of their sin, and not their punishment,
"they have left their worship;''
the service of God.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv17–19 Ephraim - The children of Ephraim were numerous and…
Ephraim - The children of Ephraim were numerous and potent, and here put for the whole ten tribes. Let him alone - He is obstinate, as such, throw him up.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv17–19 Verse 17. Ephraim] The ten tribes.
Verse 17. Ephraim] The ten tribes.
Is joined to idols] Is become incorporated with false gods.
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Let him alone.] They are irreclaimable, leave them to the consequences of their vicious conduct.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv17, 19 Hos 4:17-18. Ephraim, &c. — The Ephraimites were numerous…
Hos 4:17-18. Ephraim, &c. — The Ephraimites were numerous and potent, and are here put for the whole ten tribes. Is joined to idols — The word עצבים, here rendered idols, properly means, sorrows and pains, idols being the cause of much misery to their worshippers. Bishop Horsley reads the verse, A companion of idols is Ephraim; leave him to himself. Leave him undisturbed in his idolatrous course. He is irreclaimable. Their drink is sour — Hebrew, is gone, turned, or vapid. “The allusion is to libations made with wine grown dead, or turning sour. The image represents the want of all spirit of piety in their acts of worship, and the unacceptableness of such worship in the sight of God; which is alleged as a reason for the determination, expressed in the preceding clause, to give Ephraim up to his own ways. ‘Leave him to himself,’ says God to the prophet, ‘his pretended devotions are all false and hypocritical. I desire none of them.’” — Horsley. They have committed whoredom continually. — They have gone on in a course of idolatry: or carnal whoredom may be intended. Her rulers with shame do love, Give ye — Their rulers, to their shame be it spoken, are continually asking or expecting bribes, or are greedy of gifts. The Hebrew word translated rulers, properly signifies shields: it is taken for rulers in Psa 47:9, as well as here.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv17–19 Ephraim is joined to idols - that is, banded,…
Ephraim is joined to idols - that is, banded, bound up with them, “associated,” as the word means, with them so as to cleave to them, willing neither to part with nor to be parted from, them. The idols are called by a name, denoting toils; with toil they were fashioned, and, when fashioned, they were a toil and grief.
Let him alone - Literally, give him rest, i. e., from all further expostulations, which he will not hear. It is an abandonment of Israel for the time, as in the prophet Ezekiel, “As for you, O house of Israel, thus saith the Lord God, go ye, serve ye every one his idols” Eze 20:39. Sinners often long not to be tormented by conscience or by God’s warnings. To be left so, is to be abandoned by God, as one whose case is desperate. God will not, while there is hope, leave a man to sleep in sin; for so the numbness of the soul increases, until, like those who fall asleep amid extreme cold of the body, it never awakes.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv17–19 Partaker. Hebrew, "tied to abominations." --- Alone. His case…
Partaker. Hebrew, "tied to abominations." --- Alone. His case is desperate. (Calmet) --- Septuagint, "he has placed stumbling-blocks for himself." (Haydock)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv17–19 Ephraim--the ten tribes. Judah was at this time not…
Ephraim--the ten tribes. Judah was at this time not so given to idolatry as afterwards.
joined to--closely and voluntarily; identifying themselves with them as a whoremonger becomes one flesh with the harlot (Num 25:3; Co1 6:16-17).
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idols--The Hebrew means also "sorrows," "pains," implying the pain which idolatry brings on its votaries.
let him alone--Leave him to himself. Let him reap the fruits of his own perverse choice; his case is desperate; say nothing to him (compare Jer 7:16). Here Hos 4:15 shows the address is to Judah, to avoid the contagion of Israel's bad example. He is bent on his own ruin; leave him to his fate, lest, instead of saving him, thou fall thyself (Isa 48:20; Jer 50:8; Jer 51:6, Jer 51:45; Co2 6:17).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On v18 Hos_4:18 is obscure; here, as elsewhere in 15-19, the…
Hos_4:18 is obscure; here, as elsewhere in 15-19, the correctness of the Hebrew text is open to question. The uncertainty is increased by the conflicting testimony of the ancient versions. Assuming that the Hebrew text is correct, the following appears to be the most probable interpretation:
Their drink is sour — Certainly an incorrect translation.
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Drink appears to be used in the sense of drinking, carousing (1Sa_1:14; 1Sa_25:37). The verb means is finished, is passed (1Sa_15:32); therefore R.V. margin is nearer the truth, “Their carouse is over.” The first two clauses of Hos_4:18 are thrown together without conjunction, due to the deep emotion of the prophet. The connection must be supplied and may be indicated thus: “When their carousing is over they play the harlot”; that is, when they grow weary of one form of sin they immediately plunge into another.
They have committed whoredom continually — The verb form describes a common practice, and would better be reproduced in the English by the present tense; so R.V., “they play the harlot continually.”
But this does not reproduce fully the force of the original. The emphasis is not upon the continuation, but upon the eagerness with which the immoralities are practiced; a better rendering would be, “they indulge in whoredom.”
Her rulers with shame do love, Give ye — R.V., “her rulers dearly love shame”; margin, “they are given up to love (impure love); her rulers are a shame,” while possible, is not so good. In the Hebrew three letters seem to be accidentally repeated; if they are omitted the text reads, “her rulers love shame”; a slight emendation would give the more emphatic reading of R.V.
Rulers — Literally, shields (Psa_47:9); the office of the rulers was to guard and shield the people. This they neglected to do; all they cared for were the shameful practices.
The section closes with an announcement of judgment, in Hos_4:19.
The wind hath bound [“wrapped”] her up in her [“its”] wings — The tense is the so-called prophetic perfect; the event is still future but imminent, and the prophet is sure of its occurrence. The figure expresses the suddenness and violence with which Israel will be swept away (Isa_59:19).
They shall be ashamed [“put to shame”] because of their sacrifices — Sacrifices, with an unusual plural ending in Hebrew, would stand for the religious cult in general; its corruption (11ff.) is the cause of the nation’s overthrow. Neither the margin, “their altars shall be put to shame” nor LXX., “they shall be put to shame because of their altars,” is as good. Hos_4:18-19 contain several linguistic peculiarities; the freedom in the use of the pronouns is unusual, and it is quite possible that the text of 11-19 has not been handed down in its original purity.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv17–19 17. joined to idols] The cognate noun is used…
17. joined to idols] The cognate noun is used in Mal_2:14 of a wife in her relation to her husband, and in Isa_44:11 of an idol-worshipper in his mystic relation to his god (comp. 1Co_10:20).
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv17–18 (17) Ephraim . . . idols.—The prophet calls on…
(17) Ephraim . . . idols.—The prophet calls on Judah to leave Ephraim to himself. The Jewish interpreters Rashi and Kimchi understand this as the appeal of Jehovah to the prophet to leave Israel to her fate, that so perhaps her eyes might be opened to discern her doom.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv17–19 Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone. Ephraim…
Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone. Ephraim being the dominant tribe, gave its name to the northern kingdom. The idols were Ephraim"s folly, and to that they were wedded; and in consequence they are left to their folly, and at the same time surrendered to their fate. They may persist in their folly; they cannot be prevented. "Give him rest," as the words literally mean, from exhortations and expostulations, from remonstrances and reproofs; he will persist in his folly, prepare for his fate, and perish by his sin. This abandonment of Ephraim proves the desperate nature of his case. Left to his own recklessness, he is rushing towards ruin. Judah is warned to stand aloof from the contagion, lest by interference he might get implicated in the sin and involved in the punishment of Ephraim. The Hebrew commentators express the word rendered joined to" in the Authorized Version (ver. 17) by words importing yoked to," "allied with," and cleaving to." Again, hnh, imperative of jnihe, is explained by them as follows: Rashi: "Leave off, O prophet, and prophesy not to reprove him, for it is of no use." Aben Ezra: "Let him alone till God shall chastise him; perhaps his eyes shall then open." Kimchi: "Jehovah says to the prophet, Cease to reprove him, for it is of no use .... As a man who is angry with his fellow, because he will not hearken to him when he reproves him, and says, Since thou hearkenest not to me, I will cease for ever to reprove thee.
HOMILIES BY A. ROWLAND Ver. 17. Insensibility the result of impenitence.
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The people of Israel are here designated by the name "Ephraim." This tribe rapidly rose to influence beneath the shadow of Joshua"s greatness. Under that hero, one of its greatest sons, Ephraim was located in the most fertile part of Palestine, and being less exposed than other tribes to external attack, grew in numbers and affluence. When another Ephraimite, Jeroboam, led the revolt against the house of David, and became the first king of Israel, this tribe, already strong, stood foremost, and its name became henceforth a synonym for Israel. In this chapter Hoses exhibits the sins of the people in a series of graphic pictures. He tacitly asks whether they had anything to urge in stay of judgment. He would prove to their own consciences the righteousness of the Divine decision, so that they would be left without excuse. There ever comes from the throne of God, as once there came from Mount Sinai, a voice which appeals to human conscience to confirm the Divine sentence: "Let all the people say, Amen!" Our text exhibits a nation abandoned by God to whom all expostulation bad proved useless. It suggests a moral condition similar to the physical condition of some patient on whom the surgeon has operated again and again; who has often pleaded to be left alone, and from whom at last, with heavy heart, the skilful kindly friend turns away, saying, "It is best that he should be left alone now, for his disease is fatal." That Divine abandonment is possible may be shown from Jer_6:30, compared with Mat_5:13. At times God seems to reply to man"s wish by an echo. (compare Job_21:14 with Mat_25:41) The solemnity of the fact that insensibility follows impenitence .
I THE WICKEDNESS OF IDOLATRY. "Joined to idols" implies vital association with them. Ephraim would not part with idols, and could not be parted from them without death. Three forms of idolatry prevailed. Each appealed to a distinct section of the people, and all alike drew their hearts from God. The calves introduced by Jeroboam from Egypt were deification of "nature," and became at Gilgal and Bethel centers for political and national gatherings. Baal, the sun-god, was a deification of "power," and was worshiped in mountains and high places. Ashtaroth, the Astarte of the Greeks, the Venus of the Romans, was worshiped in the groves, under the shadow of which hideously licentious rites completed the degradation of the people. Each had its own cults and its own worshipers. We all recognize that an idol may exist in our thought as well as in our sight. The essence of idolatry is the preference of anything to God, so as to allow it to take the place he should fill in our thoughts and affections. The same object does not tempt us all, nor will the same allure us in all the stages of our life. In youth you may worship Astarte; in manhood, Baal; and in old age, the golden calves. Speak of forms of idolatry prevalent in England.
1. The idolatry of wealth. We do not allude to the gaining of money, which is possible to a man who wins it by his shrewdness and skill, by his industry and probity in business. The Lord has given him power to get wealth, which he uses as a steward for God. Describe one who makes money-getting the object of life. lie chooses a business, without any care about its evil associations. He steels his heart to misery and to the claims of his own kin. He ignores the standard of integrity which an enlightened conscience sets up. If advantage is to be gained by bribe or trick, he is not the man to lose it from scrupulousness. He has no time for home duties, for Church work, etc., which claim his efforts. In brief, he dismisses, and feels that he must dismiss, God from his plans; and as the habit grows he becomes "joined to idols," and in his avaricious hardness God lets him alone.
2. The idolatry of pleasure is not extinct. Picture a young girl introduced to society, in whose gaieties she henceforth finds herself entangled. Simple of heart as she is fair of face, she is insidiously injured by the unwholesome excitement, the late hours, the inane and profitless chit-chat of such an existence. Too tired to pray, too flattered to conquer self, she forgets those solemn realities to which the present life is only a vestibule, until in the scales of Eternal Justice she is "weighed in the balances and found wanting." Slowly but surely her early sensibility decreases; and she whose heart was once easily touched, whose conscience was keenly sensitive, becomes the hardened, scheming woman of the world. She is joined to idols: let her alone.
3. The idolatry of sensuousness. The halls of entertainment in which the lusts of the flesh and of the eye are pandered to are thronged nightly by lads whose incipient manliness becomes deteriorated. There, and elsewhere, drink exercises a fatal influence. Short of intoxication, the will is weakened, the memory obscured, the imagination so excited as to find pleasure where otherwise there would be none; and so the first step to ruin is often taken half consciously. Little by little the power of drink asserts itself, till self-control is gone, and its victim cannot live without it; and so joined to idols is he that God says, "Let him alone." In these as in similar temptations many resent holy influence till they cannot feel it; they are "twice dead," "given over to a reprobate mind.
II THE WOEFULNESS OF INSENSIBILITY.
1. Its nature. "Let him alone," is God"s command to all who have been speaking in his name, the prophet being their representative. A minister preaches, and many under the influence of the truth are moved to thought and penitence. One hears as others do, but, unlike them, is hard and callous. Often has he said to himself, "I wish I could go to a place of worship without feeling uneasy;" and at last God says," You shall. Ministers, let him alone!" Friends spoke faithfully to another, urging him to prayer, pleading with him, even with tears, to turn from sin. Sometimes he laughed at their anxiety, sometimes he was angry, at their interference, heartily wishing that they would interfere with him no more. Now they do not. One friend has removed to a distance, the voice of another is stilled by death, and another has given up further effort in utter despair of success. God has said, "Let him alone." Solemn events once stirred to thought, but now their influence is gone. The voice within which warned and entreated is sensibly weaker and less frequently heard. To conscience God has said," Let him alone," and now it is sleeping.
2. The dreadfulness of this condition is seen in the fact that the noblest art of man is gone. Suppose your hand was injured so that you were in pain night and day. Driven to desperation, you take a red-hot iron and sear the flesh, destroying nerves and tissue ruthlessly. The sore heals, the pain is gone. Ay, but the band is useless, and nothing can restore it. So may you deal with conscience. Refusing to go to the good Physician when conscious of your peril, you sin deliberately against God, and thus conscience may be "seared as with a hot iron." Note, also, the ominousness of being left alone. We see all the trees in an orchard pruned with an unsparing yet skillful hand, and are told that they will be the more vigorous and fruitful in the autumn, One tree, however, has been left untouched by the knife. Why? Is it because it is a favorite? You see the answer in the red cross on its trunk, which shows that it is marked for cutting down as a cumberer of the ground. Take another illustration. Two prisoners are convicted of offenses against the law. The one, on the ground of his youth and possible reformation, is sent home for his father to chastise, and he goes weeping. The other, a hardened criminal, is to receive no stripes, but may have anything his appetite craves. Yet all look on him with horror. The fact that he is to receive no chastisement is ominous; for he is under condemnation of death. That you are so little troubled by serious thought is no sign of safety; it may be the indication that soon, "being past feeling," you will be "given over to a reprobate mind." "Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
CONCLUSION.
1. Address those who fear they are left alone. If the faint desire to return to God yet lingers, if the fear of being forsaken of God makes you tremble, the curse has not yet fallen. The Lord, who is very pitiful and of tender mercy, still says, "Come now, and let us reason together," etc.
2. Address those in danger of being abandoned. Illustrate their position by the story of two brothers crossing a pass, overtaken by a snow-storm. One longs to sleep. He is dragged on for a time by physical force, is pleaded with earnestly, but at last is of necessity left. He sinks to rest; the snowflakes fall silently and swiftly, and in the depths he finds his grave, and sleeps the sleep of death. You may say to all good influences, "Let me alone," until God puts his seal on your choice, and says to all that might save you, "Let him alone. A.R.
An unholy alliance and a righteous abandonment.
"Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone." "Ephraim," the most powerful of the ten tribes, is frequently used by the prophets for Israel. Notice briefly two things.
I AN UNHOLY ALLIANCE. Ephraim is joined to idols," is welded to them; his heart is rooted in them. What is an idol? Carved wood, stone, or molded metal, living creatures, flowing streams, or heavenly orbs? No. These are mere representations of idols. The idol of a man is the object supremely loved, whatever that object may be. Gold, fame, beauty, power, pleasure, whatever the heart is set on, that is the idol. Here in our England we condemn polytheism, but we abound with polytheists. Men have as many idols here as they have objects of supreme love, and they are many. Thousands of Englishmen are joined to their idols; they are chained to them by the ties of their strongest loves and habits.
II A RIGHTEOUS ABANDONMENT. "Let him alone." It is a hopeless case. Waste no more time in argument and moral appliances. The times comes with every sinner when he is abandoned, his character is stereotyped, and his doom is settled. God says to providence, "Let him alone do not disturb him; to conscience, Let him alone;" to the Spirit," Let him alone." When God abandons the soul, all is over; when the fountain refuses to pour forth its waters, the stream dries up; when the sun refuses to travel up the horizon, all nature will die. D.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv17, 19 Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone.
Hos_4:17
Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone.
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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 (Hos_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. Gods 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 Gods 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, Gods 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 Gods time of patience will have an end.
I. Ephraims 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 Solomons 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. Ephraims 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 Gods 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 Gods 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 Masters 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, Gods 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 Gods 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 Gods 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 prophets 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 (Gen_6:3; 1Pe_3:18-20; 1Sa_28:15; Luk_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 (Hos_2:14-23; Hos_5:15; Hos_6:1-3; Hos_10:12; Hos_11:1-9; Hos_12:1-14).
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 (Hos_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 Ephraims associate. Partake not Ephraims sins, lest ye partake Ephraims 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 (1Jn_2:15-17; 2Co_6:14-18). 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 Gods 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. Ephraims 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 mens 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 Nebuchadnezzars, 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 ones 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 souls 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. Ephraims 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 Gods 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 sinners state. Let him alone is the burning inscription on the walls of hells 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 Israels 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 Gods 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 Gods 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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The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v18 Hos_4:18. Sour] A metaphor for degeneracy in principle (Isa_1:22);…
CRITICAL NOTES.—
Hos_4:18. Sour] A metaphor for degeneracy in principle (Isa_1:22); turned, as we say of milk. They had lost all their life and taste of goodness [Pusey]. Rulers] Lit. shields, protectors, and supporters of the state. Love] Avarice and luxury. No remedy against corruption when rulers are bribed.
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Hos_4:19. Bound her up] A tempest will suddenly and violently seize them, wrap them up, and carry them away (Psa_18:11; Psa_104:3; Isa_57:13). Ashamed] of idols and disappointed in hope. Disappointment is certain to those who seek out of God what can only be found in him.
HOMILETICS
THE BITTERNESS AND THE PUNISHMENT OF SIN.—Hos_4:18-19
In these verses we have another triplet of vice. The people are guilty of intemperance and adultery. The princes and leaders are covetous, pervert justice, and cry, “Give, give.” The whole nation had become sapless and corrupt. “Drink” is here put for the effect of sweet intoxicating wine. As sourness was opposed to sweetness, so sin is opposed to holiness and idolatry to the service of God. The verses set forth the bitterness and the punishment of sin.
I. The Bitterness of Sin. “Their drink is sour,” their delights are insipid and dead. Man’s spiritual appetite is strong, and God has made abundant provision for our happiness. But men indulge in sin, are not satisfied with healthful refreshment, and “add drunkenness to thirst.” The appetite, cloyed with indulgence, turns with disgust from the sweetest dainties, while “every bitter thing is sweet” to the hungry soul (Pro_27:7). So in spiritual things. The sinner has no relish, and feels no need for the bread of life. He seeks to quench his thirst by intoxicating pleasure or sensual indulgence. This may make him merry, but cannot make him happy. Whatever be the relish and allurements of sin, “at the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder.” There is poison in the cup. Like the little book which the Apostle John had to take, sin is sweet as honey in the mouth, but when committed, bitter in the belly (Rev_10:9). “Life, they say, is sweet; I have found it bitter,” said a young artist in the closing scenes of death. Lord Chesterfield echoed the sentiment, when he said, “I have run the silly rounds of business and of pleasure, and have done with them all. I have enjoyed all the pleasures of the world and know their futility, and do not regret their loss. I appraise them at their real value, which is very low; whereas those who have not experienced them always overrate them. They only see the gay outside, and are dazzled with their glare; but I have been behind the scenes. I look back on all that is passed as one of those romantic dreams which opium commonly produces, and I have no wish to repeat the nauseous dose.” This Marah is never dry. No art can sweeten, no draughts exhaust its perennial waters of bitterness. The bitterness of sin consists—
1. In its wretchedness. Byron described himself as a man whose happiness was gone and could not be restored. “If I were to live over again,” he writes, “I do not know what I would change in my life, except not to have lived at all.”
2. In its dissatisfaction. After all toil and labour “the good” is ever absent. The thing which was expected to give joy palls on the instant it is obtained, like the apples of the Dead Sea, which turn to ashes when tasted. On and on! the spirit still cries, “Give, give.”
3. In its disappointment. Solomon had tried everything, but unalloyed happiness was still beyond his grasp. He drank from broken cisterns, tasted the wormwood and the gall, and gives the verdict—“All was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.”
II. The Punishment of Sin. “The wind hath bound her up in her wings.” The simple meaning of this is that they would be carried away with a swift and shameful destruction. So sudden is the overthrow of the wicked, that his designs are baffled, his life upset, and he himself overwhelmed with the tempest. “He shall take them away as with a whirlwind.”
1. This destruction is sudden. The wind may sleep and be forgotten, but justice never fails. The sky is clear, men settle down, and undisturbed pursue their folly; but “when they shall say peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them.” In their revelries they will be surprised, and, like Belshazzar, “they shall not escape.”
2. This destruction is violent. What more violent than mighty winds tearing up the mountains and rending the rocks (Job_28:9). The wicked cannot stand before the tempest of God’s wrath and the thunder of his power. Cambyses, invading Ethiopia, sent a detachment to ravage the country. Herodotus says that “after they had left Oasis, they halted to take some repast, when a strong south wind arose and overwhelmed them beneath a mountain of sand.” Plutarch, in the Life, speaking of the design of Alexander “to visit the temple of Jupiter Ammon,” adds, “it was a long and laborious journey, and they might be surprised by a violent south wind amidst the wastes of sand, as it happened long before to the army of Cambyses. The wind raised the sand, and rolled it in such waves, that it devoured full 50,000 men.”
3. This destruction is shameful. “They shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices.” Ashamed on account of their sacrifices, or of them, and should forsake them and turn to God. But in any case both they and their sacrifices would be put to shame. (a) They would be disappointed in their sacrifices. They had brought nothing but evil, and not any good. Nothing good should be sought, or can be found, away from God. (b) They would be detected on hill and in dale, in public and private worship. They could not hide their shameful ways from God. Justice would discover them. “As the thief is ashamed when he is found, so is the house of Israel ashamed.” (c) They would be exposed in their shame. Exposed without refuge to Divine judgment. Shame and confusion of face will be the final issue of all the lofty expectations and the sinful ways of the ungodly. Shame is their present fruit, and what will be the results in eternity “of those things whereof ye are now ashamed?” “Many that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake; some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” Avoid the guilt if you wish to escape the doom of Israel.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 4
Hos_4:18-19. Pleasure taken into the soul is like liquor poured into a vessel so much of it as it fills it also seasons, the touch and the tincture go together. It is certain sin has no real pleasures to be stow; they are all embittered, either by the strokes of providence from without, or the accusations of conscience from within. The fine colours of the serpent do by no means make amends for the smart and poison of his sting.
Penalties are often so long delayed, that men think they shall escape them; but they are certain to follow. When the whirlwind sweeps through the forest, at its first breath that giant tree, with all its boughs, falls crashing to the ground. But it had been preparing to fall twenty years. Twenty years before it received a gash, the water commenced to settle in it at some notch, and from thence decay began to reach in towards the heart of the tree. Every year the work of death progressed, till at length it stood all rottenness, and the first gale felled it to the ground. There are men, who for twenty years shame the day and the night with debaucheries, who yet seem strong and vigorous, but in reality are full of weakness and decay. They have been preparing to fall, and the first storm will strike them down in a moment [Beecher].
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v17
Hosea
‘LET HIM ALONE’
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Hos 4:17.
The tribe of Ephraim was the most important member of the kingdom of Israel; consequently its name was not unnaturally sometimes used in a wider application for the whole of the kingdom, of which it was the principal part. Being the ‘predominant partner,’ its name was used alone for that of the whole firm, just as in our own empire, we often say ‘England,’ meaning thereby the three kingdoms: England, Scotland, and Ireland. So ‘Ephraim’ here does not mean the single tribe, but the whole kingdom of Israel.
Now Hosea himself was a Northerner, a subject of that kingdom; and its iniquities and idolatries weighed heavily on his heart, and were ripped up and brought to light with burning eloquence in his prophecies. The words of my text have often, and terribly, been misunderstood. And I wish now to try to bring out their true meaning and bearing. They have a message for us quite as much as they had for the people who originally received them.
I. I must begin by explaining what, in my judgment, this text does not mean.
First, it is not what it is often taken to be, a threatening of God’s abandoning of the idolatrous nation. I dare say we have all heard grim sermons from this text, which have taken that view of it, and have tried to frighten men into believing now, by telling them that, perhaps, if they do not, God will never move on their hearts, or deal with them any more, but withdraw His grace, and leave them to insensibility. There is not a word of that sort in the text. Plainly enough it is not so, for this vehement utterance of the Prophet is not a declaration as to God, and what He is going to do, but it is a commandment to some men, telling them what they are to do. ‘Let him alone’ does not mean the same thing as ‘I will let him alone’; and if people had only read with a little more care, they would have been delivered from perpetrating a libel on the divine loving-kindness and forbearance.
It is clear enough, too, that such a meaning as that which has been forced upon the words of my text, and is the common use of it, I believe, in many evangelical circles, cannot be its real meaning, because the very fact that Hosea was prophesying to call Ephraim from his sin showed that God had not let Ephraim alone, but was wooing him by His prophet, and seeking to win him back by the words of his mouth. God was doing all that He could do, rising early and sending His messenger and calling to Ephraim: ‘Turn ye! Turn ye! why will ye die?’ For Hosea, in the very act of pleading with Israel on God’s behalf, to have declared that God had abandoned it, and ceased to plead, would have been a palpable absurdity and contradiction.
But beyond considerations of the context, other reasons conclusively negative such an interpretation of this text. I, for my part, do not believe that there are any bounds or end to God’s forbearing pleading with men in this life. I take, as true, the great words of the old Psalm, in their simplest sense-’His mercy endureth for ever’; and I fall back upon the other words which a penitent had learned to be true by reflecting on the greatness of his own sin: ‘With Him are multitudes of redemptions’; and I turn from psalmists and prophets to the Master who showed us God’s heart, and knew what He spake when He laid it down as the law and the measure of human forgiveness which was moulded upon the pattern of the divine, that it should be ‘seventy times seven’-the multiplication of both the perfect numbers into themselves-than which there can be no grander expression for absolute innumerableness and unfailing continuance.
No, no! men may say to God, ‘Speak no more to us’; or they may get so far away from Him, as that they only hear God’s pleading voice, dim and faint, like a voice in a dream. But surely the history of His progressive revelation shows us that, rather than such abandonment of the worst, the law of the divine dealing is that the deafer the man, the more piercing the voice beseeching and warning. The attraction of gravitation decreases as distance increases, but the further away we are from Him, the stronger is the attraction which issues from Him, and would draw us to Himself.
Clear away, then, altogether out of your minds any notion that there is here declared what, in my judgment, is not declared anywhere in the Bible, and never occurs in the divine dealings with men. Be sure that He never ceases to seek to draw the most obstinate, idolatrous, and rebellious heart to Himself. That divine charity ‘suffereth long, and is kind’ . . . ‘hopeth all things, and beareth all things.’
Again, let me point out that the words of my text do not enjoin the cessation of the efforts of Christian people for the recovery of the most deeply sunken in sin. ‘Let him alone’ is a commandment, and it is a commandment to God’s Church, but it is not a commandment to despair of any that they may be brought into the fold, or to give up efforts to that end. If our Father in heaven never ceases to bear in His heart His prodigal children, it does not become those prodigals, who have come back, to think that any of their brethren are too far away to be drawn by their loving proclamation of the Father’s heart of love.
There is the glory of our Gospel, that, taking far sadder, graver views of what sin and alienation from God are, than the world’s philosophers and philanthropists do, it surpasses them just as much as in the superb confidence with which it sets itself to the cure of the disease as in the unflinching clearness with which it diagnoses the disease as fatal, if it be not dealt with by the all-healing Gospel. All other methods for the restoration and elevation of mankind are compelled to recognise that there is an obstinate residuum that will not and cannot be reached by their efforts. It used to be said that some old cannon-balls, that had been brought from some of the battlefields of the Peninsula, resisted all attempts to melt them down; so there are ‘cannon-balls,’ as it were, amongst the obstinate evil-doers, and the degraded and ‘dangerous’ classes, which mark the despair of our modern reformers and civilisers and elevators, for no fire in their furnaces can melt down their hardness. No; but there is the furnace of the Lord in Jerusalem, and the fire of God in Zion, which can melt them down, and has done so a hundred and a thousand times, and is as able to do it again to-day as it ever was. Despair of no human soul. That boundless confidence in the power of the Gospel is the duty of the Christian Church. ‘The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth!’ They laughed Him to scorn, knowing that she was dead. But He put out His hand, and said unto her ‘Talitha cumi, I say unto thee, Arise!’ When we stand on one side of the bed with your social reformers on the other, and say ‘The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth,’ they laugh us to scorn, and bid us try our Gospel upon these people in our slums, or on those heathens in the New Hebrides. We have the right to answer, ‘We have tried it, and man after man, and woman after woman have risen from the sick-bed, like Peter’s wife’s mother; and the fever has left them, and they have ministered unto Him. There are no people in the world about whom Christians need despair, none that Christ’s Gospel cannot redeem. Whatever my text means, it does not mean cowardly and unbelieving doubt as to the power of the Gospel on the most degraded and sinful.
II. So, the text enjoins on the Christian Church separation from an idolatrous world.
‘Ephraim is joined to idols.’ Do you ‘let him alone.’ Now, there has been much harm done by misreading the force of the injunction of separation from the world. There is a great deal of union and association with the most godless people in our circle, which is inevitable. Family bonds, business connections, civic obligations-all these require that the Church shall not withdraw from the world. There is the wide common ground of Politics and Art and Literature, and a hundred other interests, on which it does Christian men no good, and the world much harm, if the former withdraw to themselves, and on the plea of superior sanctity, leave these great departments of interest and influence to be occupied only by non-Christians.
Then, besides these thoughts of necessary union and association upon common ground, there is the other consideration that absolute separation would defeat the very purpose for which Christian people are here. ‘Ye are the salt of the earth,’ said Christ. Yes, and if you keep the meat on one plate and the salt on another, what good will the salt be? It has to be rubbed in particle by particle, and brought into contact over all the surface, and down into the depths of the meat that it is to preserve from putrefaction. And no Christian churches or individuals do their duty, and fulfil their function on earth, unless they are thus closely associated and intermingled with the world that they should be trying to leaven and save. A cloistered solitude, or a proud standing apart from the ordinary movements of the community, or a neglect, on the plea of our higher duties, of the duties of the citizen of a free country-these are not the ways to fulfil the exhortation of my text. ‘Let the dead bury their dead,’ said Christ; but He did not mean that His Church was to stand apart from the world, and let it go its own way. It is a bad thing for both when little Christian c?ies gather themselves together, and talk about their own goodness and religion, and leave the world to perish. Clotted blood is death; circulated, it is life.
But, whilst all this is perfectly true-and there are associations that we must not break if we are to do our work as Christian people-it is also true that it is possible, in the closest unions with men who do not share our faith, to do the same thing that they are doing, with a difference which separates us from them, even whilst we are united with them. They tell us that, however dense any material substance may seem to be, there is always a film of air between contiguous particles. And there should be a film between us and our Christless friends and companions and partners, not perceptible perhaps to a superficial observer, but most real. If we do our common work as a religious duty, and in the exercise of all our daily occupations ‘set the Lord always before’ us, however closely we may be associated with people who do not so live, they will know the difference; never fear! And you will know the difference, and will not be identified with them, but separate in a wholesome fashion from them.
And, dear brethren, if I may go a step further, I would venture to say that it seems to me that our Christian communities want few things more in this day than the reiteration of the old saying, ‘Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.’ There is so much in this time to break down the separation between him that believeth in Christ and him that doth not; narrowness has come to be thought such an enormous wickedness, and liberality is so lauded by all sorts of superficial people, that Christian men need to be summoned back to their standard. ‘Being let go, they went to their own company’-there is a natural affinity which should, and will, if our faith is vital, draw us to those who, on the gravest and solemnest things, have the same thoughts, the same hopes, the same faith. I do not urge you, God knows, to be bigoted and narrow, and shut yourselves up in your faith, and leave the world to go to the devil; but I do not wish, either, that Christian people should fling themselves into the arms and nestle in the hearts of persons who do not share with them ‘like precious faith.’
I am sure that there are many Christian people, old and young, who are suffering in their religious life because they are neglecting this commandment of my text. ‘Let him alone.’ There can be no deep affection, and, most of all-if I may venture on such ground-no wedded love worth the name, where there is not unanimity in regard to the deepest matters. It does not say much for the religion of a professing Christian who finds his heart’s friends and his chosen companions in people that have no sympathy with the religion which he professes. It does not say much for you if it is so with you, for the Christian, whom you like least, is nearer you in the depths of your true self than is the non-Christian whom you love most.
Be sure, too, that if we mix ourselves up with Ephraim, we shall find ourselves grovelling beside him before his idols ere long. Godlessness is infectious. Many a young woman, a professing Christian, has married a godless man in the fond hope that she might win him. It is a great deal more frequently the case that he perverts her than that she converts him. Do not let us knit ourselves in these close bonds with the worshippers of idols, lest we ‘learn their ways, and get a snare into our souls.’ ‘Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers. What fellowship hath light with darkness? Wherefore, come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord. Touch not the unclean thing, and I will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and My daughters.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v17 General Information:
General Information:
Yahweh is talking about Israel.
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Ephraim united himself with idols; leave him alone
Here "Ephraim" represents the whole northern kingdom of Israel, which is a metonym for the people who live there. They chose to worship idols, instead of Yahweh. Yahweh is commanding Hosea to not try to correct them. The people of Israel will not listen. (See: Synecdoche and Metonymy)
her rulers dearly love their shame
The rulers are not ashamed of what they are doing when they worship idols and turn against Yahweh.
The wind will wrap her up in its wings
Here "wind" represents God's judgment and anger against the nation of Israel. Yahweh will allow the enemy army to defeat the people of Israel and take them as captives. (See: Metaphor and Metonymy)
translationWords
Ephraim
false god
strong drink
adultery
rule
love
shame
sacrifice
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.