ad is forgotten. She has
been many times sacked and twice at least the effective classes of
her population have been swept into captivity, but this has not
broken the chain of her history."--_G. A. Smith_.
[End illustration]

{411}

HOSHEA.

(In spite of all the warnings of the prophets the people of Israel
continued to disobey God and to do the things which were evil in his
sight. The nation had its chance, and it threw that chance away. Then
a terrible fate overtook it. A great wave of invasion came sweeping
down from the North, and submerged the Northern kingdom. Samaria, the
capital city, was destroyed, and the people were carried away by
thousands into captivity.)

In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah began Hoshea the son of Elah
to reign in Samaria over Israel, and reigned nine years. And he did
that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, yet not as the kings of
Israel that were before him. Against him came up Shalmaneser king of
Assyria; and Hoshea became his servant, and brought him tribute. And
the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea; for he had sent
messengers to So king of Egypt, and offered no tribute to the king of
Assyria, as he had done year by year: therefore the king of Assyria
shut him up, and bound him in prison. Then the king of Assyria came up
throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three
years. In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria took Samaria,
and carried Israel away unto Assyria, and placed them in the Assyrian
cities. And it was so, because the children of Israel had sinned
against the Lord their God, which brought them up out of the land of
{412} Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had
feared other gods, and walked in the statutes of the nations, whom the
Lord cast out from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of
Israel, which they made. And the children of Israel did secretly
things that were not right against the Lord their God, and they built
them high places in all their cities. And they set them up pillars and
sacred symbols upon every high hill, and under every green tree: and
there they burnt incense in all the high places, as did the nations
whom the Lord carried away before them; and wrought wicked things to
provoke the Lord to anger: and they served idols, whereof the Lord had
said unto them, "Ye shall not do this thing."

Yet the Lord testified unto Israel, and unto Judah, by every pr