a movement that was on foot to depose the king.

Hosea knew that Zechariah was unlike his great father, Jeroboam II,
whom he succeeded in the year 742 B. C. E. The new king was a
weakling. Upon his accession to the throne, Syria refused to pay the
annual tribute, revolted, and Zechariah could not help himself. The
wealth of the people, the luxury they lived in, the disorganization of
the army by corruption, the oppression of the poor, the injustices
practiced in business and in the courts of law, had unfitted Israel to
wage war against Syria, or any other nation, for that matter.

Zechariah, in the six months that he ruled Samaria, therefore, lost
all that had been gained by his illustrious father. Hosea, however,
did not look for an insurrection in Samaria.

But here it was: Zechariah was dead and Shallum--yes, Shallum, the son
of Jabesh, the one mentioned to Hosea as the probable successor--had
been proclaimed king. When Shallum was spoken of, down at Bethel,
Hosea had paid no particular attention. He was occupied with his own
family troubles then, as he was in the presence of this history-making
event. The threatened revolution was the farthest thought from his
mind, at that time as it was at this moment.

Therefore, before Hosea had grasped the full significance of either of
the two events that had occurred that night, he was jostled into a
side street by the mob that now filled the market place.

Sick at heart, Hosea did not stop to see the bloodshed and the horror,
nor to listen to the story of the revolt, but walked on to the outskirts
of the city.