‘LET HIM ALONE’

     ’Ephraim is joined to idols:  let him alone.’—­HOSEA iv. 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.