Hoshea

Narrator: Ivona Gentwo
2 Kings 15:30; 2 Kings 17:1‑6  •  6 min. read  •  grade level: 11
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Deliverer
Scornful men bring a city into a snare: but wise men turn away wrath. Prov. 29:88Scornful men bring a city into a snare: but wise men turn away wrath. (Proverbs 29:8)
“In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years.” He was the last of the nineteen kings who ruled (or, rather, misruled) Israel. A period of at least eight years (see HEZEKIAH in Kings of Judah) occurred between the murder of Pekah, Hoshea’s predecessor, and his actual assumption of the throne. Why this kingless interval we have no means of knowing, nor how the time was occupied. Josephus, even if we could always trust him, gives us no help here (the usual way of rewriters or would-be improvers of Scripture history), for he passed the subject over in silence. It was probably a period of anarchy in the land, when Hosea’s position was disputed.
But God’s Word has chronicled Hoshea’s wickedness thus: “And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, but not as the kings of Israel that were before him.” There is nothing in that sentence that could be construed to Hoshea’s credit, for the Assyrian plunderers had in all probability removed and carried away the golden calves of Dan and Bethel (see Hos. 10:5-85The inhabitants of Samaria shall fear because of the calves of Beth-aven: for the people thereof shall mourn over it, and the priests thereof that rejoiced on it, for the glory thereof, because it is departed from it. 6It shall be also carried unto Assyria for a present to king Jareb: Ephraim shall receive shame, and Israel shall be ashamed of his own counsel. 7As for Samaria, her king is cut off as the foam upon the water. 8The high places also of Aven, the sin of Israel, shall be destroyed: the thorn and the thistle shall come up on their altars; and they shall say to the mountains, Cover us; and to the hills, Fall on us. (Hosea 10:5‑8)). If he did not worship them, or other abominations, it was not because he abhorred idols.
But his evil doings, whatever their character, speedily brought the Assyrian—“the rod of God’s anger”—upon him and his wicked subjects. “Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria; and Hoshea became his servant, and gave him presents.” He who conspired against his weaker Israelite master attempted the same (to his sorrow) with this powerful Gentile lord. “And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea: for he had sent messengers to so King of Egypt, and brought no present 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.”
The siege of Samaria occurred before Hoshea’s imprisonment, even though recorded after. “Hoshea’s imprisonment was not before the capture of Samaria, but the sacred writer first records the eventual fate of Hoshea himself, then details the invasion as it affected Samaria and Israel” (Fausset).
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 into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes (2 Kings 17:5-65Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years. 6In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. (2 Kings 17:5‑6)).
This siege and capture of Samaria are recorded on the monuments of Assyria just as they are narrated in 2 Kings 17. What finally became of Hoshea is not revealed, unless he is the king meant in the prophet’s poetic allusion, “As for Samaria, her king is cut off as the foam upon the water” (Hos. 10:77As for Samaria, her king is cut off as the foam upon the water. (Hosea 10:7)). His name means “deliverer,” and may have a prophetic significance. It serves as a gracious reminder to the now long scattered nation, of that great Deliverer who will “come out of Zion and turn away ungodliness from Jacob.” And then, “all Israel shall be saved” (Rom. 11:2626And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: (Romans 11:26)).
In 2 Kings 17:7-237For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods, 8And walked in the statutes of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, which they had made. 9And the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the Lord their God, and they built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city. 10And they set them up images and groves in every high hill, and under every green tree: 11And there they burnt incense in all the high places, as did the heathen whom the Lord carried away before them; and wrought wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger: 12For they served idols, whereof the Lord had said unto them, Ye shall not do this thing. 13Yet the Lord testified against Israel, and against Judah, by all the prophets, and by all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my servants the prophets. 14Notwithstanding they would not hear, but hardened their necks, like to the neck of their fathers, that did not believe in the Lord their God. 15And they rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified against them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom the Lord had charged them, that they should not do like them. 16And they left all the commandments of the Lord their God, and made them molten images, even two calves, and made a grove, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. 17And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger. 18Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight: there was none left but the tribe of Judah only. 19Also Judah kept not the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the statutes of Israel which they made. 20And the Lord rejected all the seed of Israel, and afflicted them, and delivered them into the hand of spoilers, until he had cast them out of his sight. 21For he rent Israel from the house of David; and they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king: and Jeroboam drave Israel from following the Lord, and made them sin a great sin. 22For the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did; they departed not from them; 23Until the Lord removed Israel out of his sight, as he had said by all his servants the prophets. So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day. (2 Kings 17:7‑23) we are given an instructive and touching review of Israel’s downward course. It has been truly observed that the most dismal picture of Old Testament history is that of the kingdom of Israel. Of the nine distinct dynasties that successively ruled the dissevered tribes, three ended with the total extermination of the reigning family. The kingdom lasted for a period of about 250 years, and the inspired records of those eventful two-and-a-half centuries of Israel’s kings and people furnish us with little more than repeated and fearful exhibitions of lawlessness and evil. Out of the nineteen kings that ruled Israel from the great division to the deportation of the people to the land of Assyria, only seven died natural deaths (Baasha, Omri, Jehu, Jehoahaz, Jehoash, Jeroboam II, and Menahem); seven were assassinated (Nadab, Elah, Joram, Zachariah, Shallum, Pekaiah, and Pekah); one committed suicide (Zimri); one died of wounds received in battle (Ahab); one was “struck” by the judgment of God (Jeroboam); one died of injuries received from a fall (Ahaziah); and the other, and last (Hoshea), apparently was “cut off as foam upon the water.” To this meaningful array of facts must be added two prolonged periods of anarchy, when there was no king in Israel, every man doing, in all likelihood, “that which was right in his own eyes.”
The kingdom of Judah continued for more than a century and a quarter after the kingdom of Israel had ceased to exist, making its history fully one-third longer than that of the ten tribes. Then it too, like its sister-kingdom, fell into disintegration and decay, and was given up to the first universal empire under the renowned Nebuchadnezzar (see 2 Kings 25, and 2 Chron. 36:15-2315And the Lord God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up betimes, and sending; because he had compassion on his people, and on his dwelling place: 16But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, till there was no remedy. 17Therefore he brought upon them the king of the Chaldees, who slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion upon young man or maiden, old man, or him that stooped for age: he gave them all into his hand. 18And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king, and of his princes; all these he brought to Babylon. 19And they burnt the house of God, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire, and destroyed all the goodly vessels thereof. 20And them that had escaped from the sword carried he away to Babylon; where they were servants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia: 21To fulfil the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years. 22Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, 23Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me; and he hath charged me to build him an house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? The Lord his God be with him, and let him go up. (2 Chronicles 36:15‑23)). This world monarchy began the “times of the Gentiles,” during which “the most High ruleth [over] the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will” (Dan. 4:2525That they shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field, and they shall make thee to eat grass as oxen, and they shall wet thee with the dew of heaven, and seven times shall pass over thee, till thou know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will. (Daniel 4:25))—setting up over it, at times, even the basest of men (as Belshazzar, the last Darius, Alexander, Nero, etc.). Since that day empire has superseded empire, dynasty has supplanted dynasty, and king succeeded king, as God has said, “I will overturn, overturn, overturn, it: and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him” (Ezek. 21:2727I will overturn, overturn, overturn, it: and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him. (Ezekiel 21:27)).We hope His coming will be very soon, and then the eye of weeping, waiting Israel “shall see the King in His beauty.”
But before this, “the willful king,” the “profane, wicked prince of Israel” (the antichrist) must come. And from his unworthy head shall be removed the crown (see Ezek. 21:25-2625And thou, profane wicked prince of Israel, whose day is come, when iniquity shall have an end, 26Thus saith the Lord God; Remove the diadem, and take off the crown: this shall not be the same: exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high. (Ezekiel 21:25‑26)), to be placed, with many others, on the once thorn-crowned brow of Him who is the King of kings and Lord of lords. That will be our highest joy and glory, to see Him, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ honored and declared by all, as God’s “firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth” (Psa. 89:2727Also I will make him my firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth. (Psalm 89:27)).
The Ruler over men shall be just,
Ruling in the fear of God;
And He shall be as the light of the morning,
Like the rising of the sun,
A morning without clouds,
When, from the sunshine after rain,
The green grass springeth from the earth.
For this is all my salvation, And every desire.
“Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”