Hoshea’s reign of nine years marks the end of Israel's history. He had obtained the kingship by killing Pekah, the son of Remaliah (chapter 15:30), and the only difference the Spirit of God indicates between Hoshea and those who had ruled in Samaria and Jezreel before him, is that the evil he practiced was not as remarkable as theirs.
The rising power of Assyria, allowed now by God because of the complete failure and ruin of the nation He had brought out of Egypt, compelled Hoshea to take a subject place, but he secretly appealed to the king of Egypt, and so brought about the end of Israel as a nation. There yet remained the remnant under the son of David at Jerusalem, the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin.
But of the history of the ten tribes which broke away under Jeroboam the son of Nebat following Solomon's death (1 Kings 12), we are to hear no more till the millennial day when they shall be brought back and united to the two tribes, be one nation again, and serve the living and true God alone. (Ezekiel 37, Revelation 7, etc.).
The Israelites were taken by the Assyrian king to his own country, and have since disappeared from the knowledge of men. Individuals returned to their land. but as a nation there was no return, and there will be none until that time prophesied of by Ezekiel (chapter 20:34-38).
The sins of Israel had not escaped the all-seeing eye of God, nor His all-hearing ear (Psalm 94:99He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? he that formed the eye, shall he not see? (Psalm 94:9)), and the judgment of the nation is fully told out in this chapter. Prophets and seers (those whom God enabled to foresee the judgments coming) were rejected together with His word — statutes, covenant, and testimonies. Idolatry resulted with its associated evils. To Israel rather, than to Judah, were the early prophets sent, but at length, after many warnings and much pleading through these servants of God, the nation was cut off so completely, that none but God knows where its people are.
Strangers were brought into the land to occupy it in the place of Israel's hosts (verse 25), and God asserted His title to the country which indeed He has never given up. One of Jeroboam's priests was then sent to the Samaritans to teach them the fear of the Lord, but every nation represented there made gods of their own.
And has the world progressed toward God since ? Progress there has been, indeed, in knowledge, in making life attractive, and in many other ways, but the human heart is still opposed to God. Is not the day of Revelation 13 plainly approaching?