Chapter 13

monarchy as an institution, viii. 4, the impotence of the kings to stem the tide of disaster is too painfully clear to him, x, 7, 15.

Whether Hosea ever alludes to Judah in his genuine prophecies is very doubtful. Some of the references are obvious interpolations (cf. i. 7), and for one reason or another, nearly all of them are suspicious: in vi. 4, e.g., the parallelism (cf. _v_. 10) suggests that _Israel_ should be read instead of _Judah_. But there can be no doubt that the message of Hosea is addressed in the main, if not exclusively, to northern Israel. It is her land that is _the_ land, i. 2, cf. 4, her king that is "our king,"