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 on His servant, and persuades himself that the faithlessness of which he is a victim is but a feeble type of that which Jahveh had suffered at the hands of His people.  Israel had gone a-whoring after strange gods, and the day of retribution for its crimes was not far distant:  “The children of Israel shall abide many days without king and without prince, and without sacrifice and without pillar, and without ephod or teraphim; afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king; and shall come with fear unto the Lord and to His goodness in the latter days."**

     * Hos. i. 4, 5.