Hosea 4:17 Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone. These words are not intended as a threatening of the cessation of the Divine pleadings with an obstinate transgressor — there are no people about whom God says that they are so wedded to their sin that it is useless to try to do anything with them, and they are not a commandment to God's servants to fling up in despair or in impatience the effort to benefit obstinate and stiff-necked evil-doers. This Book of Hosea is one long pleading with this very Ephraim, just because he is" "joined to idols." Hosea was a prophet of the northern nation, but it is the southern nation, Judah, that is here addressed. What is meant by letting alone is plainly enough expressed in a previous verse, — "Though thou, Israel, play the harlot, let not Judah offend." The calf-worship of Israel is held up as a warning to Judah, which is commanded to keep clear of all complicity with it, and to avoid all entangling alliances with backsliding Israel. The prophet with his "Let him alone" is saying the very same thing as the apostle with his "Come out from among them, and be ye separate." Ephraim is wedded to his idols, as parasite to elm-tree, and so if you are joined to it you will be joined to its idols. Translate this into plain simple English, and it means this — It is a very bad sign of a Christian man when his chosen companions are people that have no sympathy with him in his religion. A great many of us will have to plead guilty to this indictment. There are many things — such as differences of position, culture, and temperament which cannot but modify the association of Christian people with one another, and may sometimes make them feel more near to un-Christian associates who are like themselves in these respects than to Christians who are not. What deadens so much of our Christianity to-day, and makes it fail as an aggressive power, is that Christian people get mixed up in utterly irreligious association with irreligious men and women, and sink their own Christianity, or at all events hide it. The sad thing is that their religion is so defective that it takes no trouble to hide it. The other sad thing is that so many Christians, so called, have so little Christianity that they never feel they are out of their element in such associations. We cannot be too intimately associated with irreligious people, if only we take our religion with us. A lesson may be learned from the separate existence of the Jews since their dispersion. They mix in the occupations of common life, and yet are as absolutely distinct as oil from the water on which it floats. So should the Church be in the world; mixing in all outward affairs, and exercising a Christianising influence on all with whom its members come in contact; and yet, by manifest diversity of sympathies and desires and affections, keeping itself absolutely distinct from the world with which it is to blend. The primitive and fundamental meaning of "holy" is "set apart." You Christian people are set apart for the Master's use. Let it be every man to his own company. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone. |
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