cry we heard at the beginning of the passage. Now we hear his
glad response to God's abundant answer. 'What have I to do any more with
idols?' He had vowed (verse 3) to have no more to do with them, and the
resolve is deepened by the rich grace held forth to him. Hosea had
lamented Ephraim's mad adherence to 'his idols' (iv. 17), but now the
union is dissolved, and by penitence and reception of God's grace, he is
joined to the Lord, and parted from them. His renunciation of idolatry
is based, in the second clause, on his experience of what God can do,
and on his having heard God's gracious voice of pardon and promise. If a
man hears God, he will not be drawn to worship at any idol's shrine.

Further, in the third clause, Ephraim is joyfully conscious of the
change that has passed on him, in accordance with the great promises
just spoken, and with grateful astonishment that such verdure should
have burst out from the dry and rotten stump of his own sinful nature,
exclaims, 'I am like a green fir-tree.' That is another reason why he
will have no more to do with idols. They could never have made his
sapless nature break into leafage. But what of the fourth clause--'From
Me is thy fruit found'? Can we understand that to mean that Ephraim
still speaks, keeping up the image of the previous clause, and declaring
that all the new fruitfulness which he finds in himself he recognises to
be God's, both in the sense that, in reality, it is produced by Him, and
that it belongs to Him? He comes seeking fruit, and He finds it. All our
good is His, and we shall be happy, productive, and wise, in proportion
as we offer all our works to Him, and feel that, after all, they are not
ours, but the works of that Spirit which dwells in penitent and
believing hearts. Some have thought that this last clause must be taken
as spoken by God; but, even if so taken, it conveys substantially the
same thought as to the divine origin of man's fruitfulness.

The last verse is rather a general reflection summing up the whole than
an integral part of this wonderful representation of penitence, pardon,
and fruitfulness. It declares the great truth that the knowledge of the
pardoning mercy of God, and of the ways by which He weans men from sin
and makes them fruitful of good, makes us truly wise. That knowledge is
more than intellectual apprehension; it is experience. Providence has
its mysteries, but they who keep near to God, and are 'just' because
they d