=Reading a meaning in sorrow.=—­Then like a flash the thought came to him; Jehovah is just like me in this regard.  He wants love, not gifts, from his people, a love which on their part does not fawn for other gifts from him in return, like the cupboard love of kittens purring for cream.  He loves his people Israel just as I love Gomer.  That is why he asks us not to worship these other gods, the Baals; not because he is jealous but because he is good.  He wants us to learn a different kind of worship altogether—­a worship which is not prompted by greed but by love.

With his whole soul aflame, Hosea poured these new ideas into the ears of his countrymen.

    ="I desire mercy, and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God
    more than burnt-offerings."=

These great words were quoted by Jesus himself in one of his controversies with the Pharisees; they are one of the supreme utterances of human literature.

STORM CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON

This new insight of Hosea helped him to interpret hopefully the troubles which at that time were coming thick and fast upon his people.  The forebodings of Amos were coming true.  The kings of Assyria were ambitious.  They had set their hearts upon a great Assyrian empire extending from Babylonia to Egypt.  For more than two centuries each new king at Nineveh sent his conquering armies farther west and south.  Already in Hosea’s day they had more than once invaded northern Israel and had taken away tribute.  And the leaders of the nation did not have the brains or the character to avoid a conflict with this merciless and resistless foe.

=Jehovah loving even in punishment.=—­Amos had declared that Jehovah would surely punish his people because of injustices and wrongs which they were inflicting on one another.  Hosea agreed, but was able to go further, and say that in these very punishments which were now coming Jehovah was still showing not his anger but his love.  He was punishing in the hope that his children might learn their lesson and return to him in love.

=Fall of the northern kingdom.=—­The nation, as a nation, seemed to pay no attention to Hosea’s pleadings.  They went right on living their selfish and greedy and lustful lives.  And in B.C. 721, as a result of provoking the Assyrian king Shalmanezer to a fresh attack, the land was again invaded and the city of Samaria was captured and sacked.  Thousands of the northern Hebrews were carried away as exiles to other lands and never returned.  The northern kingdom was a failure.  The religious ideals and dreams of Abraham and Moses had not yet been fulfilled.  The common people had had little opportunity for happiness or growth in knowledge and goodness.  But the southern kingdom still existed.  And many a disciple of Hosea, some of them carrying scraps and rolls of papyrus on which his sayings were copied, fled to Jerusalem, and there sowed the seed of his great message of a God not only of justice but of love.