inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and
drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit
of them. And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more
be plucked up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord
thy God."*

The voice of Amos was not the only one raised in warning. From the midst
of Ephraim, another seer, this time a priest, Hosea, son of Beeri,**
was never weary of reproaching the tribes with their ingratitude, and
persisted in his foretelling of the desolation to come.

* Amos ix. 13-15.

** Hoshea (or Hosea) was regarded by the rabbis as the
oldest of the lesser prophets, and his writings were placed
at the head of their collected works. The title of his book
(Hos. i. 1), where he begins by stating that he preached
"in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash (Jehoash), King of
Israel," is a later interpolation; the additional mention of
Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, is due
to an attempted analogy with the title of Isaiah. Hosea was
familiar with the prophecies of Amos, and his own
predictions show that the events merely foreseen by his
predecessor were now in course of fulfilment in his day. The
first three chapters probably date from the end of the reign
of Jeroboam, about 750 B.C.; the others were compiled under
his successors, and before 734-733 B.C., since Gilead is
there mentioned as still forming part of Israel (Hos. vi. 8;
xii. 12), though it was in that year laid waste and
conquered by Tiglath-pileser III. Duhm has suggested that
Hosea must have been a priest from the tone of his writings,
and this hypothesis is generally accepted by theologians.

The halo of grandeur and renown with which Jeroboam had surrounded
the kingdom could not hide its wretched and paltry character from the
prophet's eyes; "for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of
Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause the kingdom of the house
of Israel to cease. And it shall come to pass at that day that I
will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel."* Like
his predecessor, he, too, inveighed against the perversity and
unfaithfulness of his people. The abandoned wickedness of Gomer, his
wife, had brought him to despair. In the bitterness of his heart, he
demands of Jahveh why He should have seen fit to visit such humiliation
o