-- Footnote 1. The fall of Samaria suggested similar reflections to the earlier prophets with reference to the northern kingdom, but their views are, as a rule (Amos v., Isaiah ix.), not nearly so radical nor so far-fetched. Hosea does certainly trace the guilt of the present up to the commencement, but he exemplifies the principle (like Micah, chapter vi.) chiefly from the early history of Jacob and Moses: as for the really historical period he belongs to it too much himself to survey it from so high a point of view. In this also he is a precursor of later writers, that he regards the human monarchy as one of the great evils of Israel: he certainly had very great occasion for this in the circumstances of the time he lived in. -- Footnote Ezekiel carried out this negative criticism of the past to greater lengths, with particular reference to the abominations of the older worship (chapter xvi., xx., xxiii.); and it is also to be found in Isaiah xl.-xlvi. (xlii. 24, xliii. 27), though here it is supplemented by a positive and greatly more suggestive view; we find it also in Deuteronomy xxviii.-xxx., and in Leviticus xxvi. The whole of the past is regarded as one enormous sin, which is to be expiated in the exile (Jeremiah xxxii. 30; Ezekiel xviii. 2, xxxiii. 10; Isaiah xl. 1); the duration of the punishment is even calculated from that of the sin (Leviticus xxvi. 34). The same attitude towards old times is continued after the return (Zechariah viii. 13 seq., ix. 7 seq.; Nehemiah ix. 7 seq.). The treatment is naturally from a Judaean point of view. Outside of Jerusalem the worship of Jehovah is heretical, so that the political revolt of the Northern Israelites was at the same time an ecclesiastical schism. Yet they are not excluded in consequence from community with the people of God, as in the Chronicles: the old traditions are not thrown so completely overboard as yet: only after the destruction of Samaria by the Assyrians does Judah continue the history alone. Almost the same reverence is paid to David and his house as to the city and the temple. His house has the promise of eternal continuance, with regard to which the writer likes to make use of the words of Jeremiah xxxiii. 17. The book closes, doubtless not by chance, with the liberation from prison of the Davidide Jehoiachin; this is the earnest of greater things yet in store. In the words of Abijah to Jeroboam, also, when he says that the humiliation of the house of David and the revolt from it of the ten tribes will not last for ever, we see the Messianic hope appear, which, as we learn from Haggai and Zechariah, largely occupied the minds of the Jews at the time of the exile and after it.