What a figure of the untamed soul which refuses the easy yoke of the blessed Redeemer. Man’s untamed spirit spurns the adorable Lord’s love. You cannot conceive a truer picture of the altogether untractable than this. The wild ass will go its own way. But this is according to nature. What we are Called to contemplate is the fallen being man, described as a “wild ass alone by itself.” Ephraim and the Ten Tribes are compared to the wild ass for many reasons.
1. They refused Christ’s easy yoke; their hearts were untamed; they were stubborn in their rejection of God’s inviting grace; they were full of obdurate folly; they were headstrong and unruly, not consenting to any restraints; they chose their own course, running up and down after sin, mad upon their idols, as the wild ass traverses the desert only to gratify its own low nature.
2. The wild ass is excessively swift; and although numbers of them commonly herd together, yet it is usual for some one of them to break away and separate himself from his company, and run alone or at random by himself. It is when he thus breaks away that he is such an easy prey to the lion. Ephraim, in seeking to be all for himself, became the more sure prey of the devourer; and whenever the sinner breaks away by himself, thinking thereby to be masterless and free, he is in a fair way of being left to his own devices and given up by God.
3. The wild ass is the lion’s prey in the wilderness, and the soul faithless to Christ, seeking its own things, is as a wild ass alone by himself, or for himself, for his own gratification, his own pleasure, and the end of these things is death. (Alfred Clayton Thiselton.)
