2 KINGS xvii. 1-41
"As for Samaria, her king is cut off as the foam upon the water."--HOS. x. 7.
As a matter of convenience, we follow our English Bible in calling the prophet by the name Ho_sea_, and the nineteenth, last, and best king of Israel Ho_shea_. The names, however, are identical (הֹושֵׁצַ), and mean "Salvation"--the name borne by Joshua also in his earlier days. In the irony of history the name of the last king of Ephraim was thus identical with that of her earliest and greatest hero, just as the last of Roman emperors bore the double name of the Founder of Rome and the Founder of the Empire--Romulus Augustulus. By a yet deeper irony of events the king in whose reign came the final precipitation of ruin wore the name which signified deliverance from it.
And more and more, as time went on, the prophet Hosea felt that he had no word of present hope or comfort for the king his namesake. It was the more brilliant lot of Isaiah, in the Southern Kingdom, to kindle the ardour of a generous courage. Like Tyrtæus, who roused the Spartans to feel their own greatness--like Demosthenes, who hurled the might of Athens against Philip of Macedon--like Chatham, "bidding England be of good cheer, and hurl defiance at her foes"--like Pitt, pouring forth, in the days of the Napoleonic terror, "the indomitable language of courage and of hope,"--Isaiah was missioned to encourage Judah to despise first the mighty Syrian, and then the mightier Assyrian. Far different was the lot of Hosea, who could only be the denouncer of an inevitable doom. His sad function was like that of Phocion after Chæroneia, of Hannibal after Zama, of Thiers after Sedan: he had to utter the Cassandra-voices of prophecy, which his besotted and demented contemporaries--among whom the priests were the worst of all[389]--despised and flouted until the time for repentance had gone by for ever.
True it is that Hosea could not be content--what true heart could?--to breathe nothing but the language of reprobation and despair. Israel had been "yoked to his two transgressions,"[390] but Jehovah could not give up His love for His chosen people:--
"How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? How shall I surrender thee, Israel? How shall I make thee as Admah? How shall I treat thee as Zeboim? Mine heart is turned within Me; I am wholly filled with compassion! I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim: For I am God, and not man. The Holy One in the midst of thee! I will not come to exterminate! They shall come after Jehovah as after a lion that roars! For he shall roar, and his sons shall come hurrying from the west, They shall come hurrying as a bird out of Egypt, And as a dove out of the land of Assyria; And I will cause them to dwell in their houses, Saith Jehovah."[391]
Alas! the gleam of alleviation was imaginary rather than actual. The prophet's wish was father to his thought. He had prophesied that Israel should be scattered in all lands (ix. 3, 12, 17, xiii. 3-16). This was true; and it did not prove true, except in some higher ideal sense, that "Israel shall again dwell in his own land" (xiv. 4-7) in prosperity and joy.
The date of Hoshea's accession is uncertain, and we cannot tell in what sense we are to understand his reign as having lasted "nine years."[392] We have no grounds for accepting the statement of Josephus (_Antt._, IX. xiii. 1), that Hoshea had been a friend of Pekah and plotted against him. Tiglath-Pileser expressly says that he himself slew Pekah and appointed Hoshea.[393] His must have been, at the best, a pitiful and humiliating reign. He owed his purely vassal sovereignty to Assyrian patronage. He probably did as well for Israel as was in his power. Singular to relate, he is the only one of all the kings of Israel of whom the historian has a word of commendation; for while we are told that "he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord," it is added that it was "not as the kings of Israel that were before him." But we do not know wherein either his evil-doing or his superiority consisted. The Rabbis guess that he did not replace the golden calf at Dan which Tiglath-Pileser had taken away (Hos. x. 6); or that he did not prevent his subjects from going to Hezekiah's passover.[394] "It seems like a harsh jest," says Ewald, "that this Hoshea, who was better than all his predecessors, was to be the last king." But so it has often been in history. The vengeance of the French Revolution smote the innocent and harmless Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette--not Louis XIV., or Louis XV. and Madame du Pompadour.