6

were, perhaps, from the tribe of Gad, and they carried with them the savage' customs which they had learned, especially from the ferocious wars of Syria and Ammon, in their own Trans-jordanic districts. Pekah, who overthrew this dynasty, was himself also probably from the same region. At least, his fifty companions in the conspiracy were from Gilead, and two of them bore names which carry us back to the earliest days of those pastoral regions: Argob, from the fastness of Bashan, Arieh, 'the Lionlike,' from those Gradite chiefs of old, whose faces were as the faces of lions' 3-remnants, it may be, of the original guards of David. Of one or other of these pastoral kings, the unknown Prophet, whose flickering light alone guides us through these stormy times, speaks as of the careless and rapacious shepherd who neglects the flock, and grasps only at the flesh of the fat. Of one or other too, as the fall of the dynasty approaches, he bursts forth into the cry which afterwards became proverbial, but which had a peculiar fitness to those nomadic chiefs: Awake, O sword, against My shepherd . . . smite the shepherd, and the 'sheep shall be scattered.'"

6

Nothing now intervened to save from the destroying armies those outlying portions of the dominions of Israel. The gates of Lebanon were thrown wide open-the forests of Bashan howled in their anguish, as the destroyer swept through them, and their cry of distress was echoed back by the shepherds in their oaken glades, and by the lions startled in their lairs down in the deep recesses of the Jordan valley." Then fell the grievous affliction on the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali,' 'the ' beyond Jordan'a darkness

1 2 Kings xv. 16. Compare ibid. viii. 12; 1 Sam. xi. 2; Amos i. 13.

2 Kings xv. 25.

31 Chr. xii. 8.
Ibid. xxvi. 31, 32.

6

Sea of Galilee and only to be lit up by a

Zech. xi. 16.
Ibid. xiii. 7.
Ibid. xi. 1-3.

• Isa. ix. 1.

distant gleam, seen far off by Prophetic eyes. Then the
hostile Ammonites, long warded off, rushed into the vacant
space, and the
went up:
cry
'Hath Israel no sons? Hath he
no heir? Why doth Molech inherit Gad, and his people
'dwell in his cities?'1 "Feed them,'-so the last reminis-
cence of their pastoral state expresses itself-feed them;
' guide them like a flock of their own sheep, in Bashan and
' in Gilead, as in the days of old.' 2

4

Pekah was now left with a mere fragment of the ancient kingdom. With that terrible succession of royal murders, so forcibly described as 'blood touching blood,' he fell before a 3 conspiracy, a band of conspirators, of whom the chief, Hoshea, formerly one of his own adherents, mounted the throne. Rival factions, like those which divided Jerusalem A.D. 730. in its last siege, troubled also the last days of Samaria: the old feud between Ephraim and Manasseh, which had in the time of Jepthah given birth to the symbol of all party watchwords, broke out afresh-Ephraim devoured Manasseh, and Manasseh devoured Ephraim."

Better than his predecessors-like Josiah, in like case, in Judah-Hoshea came too late to redeem the fortunes of his country. At first the vassal of Assyria, he took advantage of the Tyrian war to throw off Shalmaneser's" yoke, and began that system of alliances with Egypt, which from that time forward was the last desperate resource of the nations of Western Asia against the encroachments of Assyria. It might have seemed as if the old alliance with Egypt, which had set the founder of the northern kingdom on his throne, would support his last successor.

But it was too late.

syrian title; but no such name occurs
in the inscriptions of this epoch. It
is found, however, in the Tyrian his-
tory of Menander (Joseph. Ant. ix. 14,
§2); Rawlinson, ii. 401). For the
Tyrian war, see Ewald, iii. 608.

2 Kings xvii. 4.

Hoshea.

Capture of
Samaria.

A. D. 721.

Sargon, the Assyrian king or general, descended on the country. Hoshea was carried off as a hostage for the payment of the tribute. It was a sudden disappearance, like foam upon the water.' Then the Assyrian armies poured into the country.

A struggle took place in Galilee—perhaps in the fatal field of Jezreel, perhaps in the deep glen of Beth-arbel, where, as afterwards in the time of Josephus, the Israelite population took refuge in the caves in the precipitous cliffs, and mothers and children were dashed down to the valley beneath. The siege of Samaria followed. Without their king, the people stood at bay for three years, as in the final siege of Jerusalem. As the end drew near, they gave themselves up to the frantic revellings of despair." At last the city was stormed. With the ferocity common to all the warfare of those times, the infants were hurled down the rocky sides of the hill on which the city stood, or destroyed in their mothers' bosoms. Famine and pestilence completed the work, of war.9 The stones of the ruined city were poured down into the rich valley below, and the foundations were laid bare. 10 Palace and hovel alike fell; the statues were broken to pieces; 12 the crown of pride, the glory of Ephraim, was trodden under foot.13

8

From the prophets of Israel-from the seven thousand of Elijah's vision-two voices especially make themselves heard above the rest. One is the author of the 80th Psalm.' The Divine protection is invoked under the figure that the unknown Prophet of the period has so often used: 'O Thou that art the Shepherd of Israel, give ear; Thou 'that leadest Joseph like a sheep.' There is no mention of Judah-only the days are recalled in which the Ark marched in the wilderness before the three great kindred 'tribes of Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh.' That goodly vine of the house of Joseph, which hung over the valley of Shechem, which had been twice over brought from Egypt which cast its shade on the mountains of Gerizim, and spread its branches to the sea, visible from those very heights, and its boughs across the Jordan to the distant Euphrates-was now trodden down. The wild Assyrian boar

5

had trampled it under foot; it was burnt with fire: O God ' of hosts, turn and visit this vine, which Thy right hand

hath planted, the branch that Thou madest so strong for 'Thyself.' Often has this Psalm ministered to the encouragement of broken hopes, but never so fitly as in this its first application.

The Prophet Hosea is the only individual character that Hosea. stands out amidst the darkness of this period-the Jeremiah, as he may be called, of Israel. His life had extended over nearly the whole of the last century of the northern kingdom. In early youth, whilst the great Jeroboam was still on the throne, he had been called to the Prophetic office. In his own personal history, he shared in the misery brought on his country by the profligacy of the age. In early youth, he

1 See Hengstenberg on Ps. lxxx. The LXX. calls it ὑπὲρ τοῦ ̓Ασσυρίου. 2 Ps. lxxx. 1. Compare Zech. xi. 3,

5, 8, 15, 16; xiii. 7.

3 Compare Num. ii. 18-24.

For the vine as symbolical of

Joseph, comp. Gen. xlix. 22; Ezek.
xix. 10.

5 Josh. xxiv. 32; 1 Kings xii. 2.
As applied by Gundulph of
Rochester; Fleming, founder of Lin-
coln College, Oxford.

had been united in marriage with a woman who had fallen into the vices which surrounded her. He had loved her with a tender love; she had borne to him two sons and a daughter: she had then deserted him, wandered from her home, fallen again into wild licentiousness, and been carried off as a slave. From this wretched state, with all the tenderness of his nature, he bought her, and gave her one more chance of recovery by living with him, though apart. No one who has observed the manner in which individual experience often colours the general religious doctrine of a gifted teacher, can be surprised at the close connexion which exists between the life of Hosea and the mission to which he was called. In his own grief for his own great calamity-the greatest that can befall a tender human soul-he was taught to feel for the Divine grief over the lost opportunities of the nation once so full of hope. It is, as it has been beautifully described, a succession of sighs, a Prophetic voice from the depth of human misery: The words of upbraiding, of judgment, of 'woe, burst out one by one, slowly, heavily, condensed, 6 abrupt, from the Prophet's heavy and shrinking soul, . . . as though each sentence burst with a groan from his heart, and he had anew to take breath, before he uttered each ' repeated woe. Each verse forms a whole for itself, like one heavy toll in a funeral knell.' But in his own love no less he was taught to see, first of any of the Prophets of the Old Dispensation, the power of the forgiving love of God. Even the names of his children were intended to signify-one, the condemnation of Jehu's massacres; the two others, the extension of the Holy Land and the Divine Mercy, beyond the limits of Israel. Come, and let us return unto the LORD, for He hath torn and will heal

3

Ius, hath smitten and will bind us up.

Hosea i. 3, iii. 1 (Ewald; Pusey;

and see Professor Plumptre's poem on Gomer).

After two days

* Dr. Pusey on Hosea, p. 5.

Hosea i. 4, 6, ii. 1.