There an unusual and most unexpected sight met him. The place was filled with people. Troops were fighting in front of the royal palace. From the palace, which was brightly illuminated, soldiers and plain citizens were pouring forth in a stream. Above the shrieking of men and women and the clang of contending arms, he heard enthusiastic shouts: "King Zechariah is dead! Long live King Shallum!" What? Zechariah dead! In a flash the whole situation was made clear to Hosea. Now he recalled that down at Bethel, the king's sanctuary, someone had spoken to him of 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. His head swam from the excitement. His temples pounded like sledge hammers. As he walked on, his feet grew heavy and dragged. Just how he got there Hosea did not know, but suddenly he found himself in front of his own home. The day was now dawning. The first rays of the sun were shooting their way through the early morning mist and playing on the bedewed stones of the house. Hosea entered quietly, and walked up to the children's bed room. To his amazement he found Jezreel asleep on his arms at the table. As he gazed for a moment upon the children, Hosea's heart was wrung with sorrow. He picked Jezreel up from the chair. The boy, asleep, clung tightly about his father's neck. Hosea laid him in his bed, covered him, kissed him and, with bowed head, went to his own room.