Let Alone (4)—“Let Him Alone” - All The LORD is near Daily Devotionals for 2025

Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone.
Hosea 4:17

Let Alone (4)—"Let Him Alone"
"Joined to idols": not merely idolatrous, bad as that may be, but definitely joined to them in a fearful and daring unity. Recovery appears hopeless. A long course of tampering with evil has not only blunted the conscience, but turned the evil into a pleasure, and every sense of what is due to God is dulled, so that the idols assert their authority, and God is forsaken. Alas, that the heart should thus become entrapped, Satan so easily conquer, and man fall so completely! Yet so it is; and when Ephraim is thus joined hopelessly and willingly to idols, the only, but terrible, sentence is, "Let him alone." He must be left to the governmental ways of God. The ministry of man must not now interfere. He has chosen his course, and selected his path, and he must rue his folly. A man's way is his reward. What he sows he reaps. The object of his worship gives form to his life and character to his future. Such is the nature of God's government, and therefore He said to idol-ruined Ephraim, "Let him alone."

To be let alone by God is the most awful condition in which man can find himself. Ten thousand times better to be emptied from vessel to vessel, like Job, than allowed to drift down the stream, like Ephraim. Better to feel the weight of God's hand in chastening—for it is a Father's hand—than exist under a sense of His averted countenance.

Thank God there is grace as well as government, and His desire is that His people should "continue in the grace of God."

What a wide difference between the let alone that was passed on the conduct of Mary (see Jn. 12:7) and that passed on Ephraim; between the let her alone of divine approval and the let him alone of divine displeasure; between the shield of heavenly shelter and the sentence of holy condemnation.

John Wilson-Smith