Micah returned to Moresheth to think matters over at his leisure. It was not an easy or simple task that he had voluntarily assumed. One source of strength he always had to rely upon. Close to the soil, seeing the Creator's handiwork in the fields at his feet by day and in the wonders of the starry firmament by night, he was full of the spirit of God. At the very outset of his self-imposed mission he could exclaim, fervently: "But as for me, I will look unto the Lord: I will wait for the God of my salvation: My God will hear me." God's guiding hand often leads us to our destinations by winding and unexpected paths. It is strange to record that Micah's first opportunity, in the task he had set before himself, came to him by way of Egypt and an Ethiopian usurper. The ambitions of that wily Pharaoh led directly to the fall of Samaria and to the Commoner's first great prophetic utterance. CHAPTER III. _When Samaria Fell._ A man who is a traitor to his country will, in all likelihood, prove traitorous to his avowed friends. Hoshea, son of Elah, of Samaria, was such a man. Tilgath-Pileser, the Assyrian conqueror of Damascus assisted Hoshea to assassinate King Pekah, and appointed the assassin to rule in Pekah's stead, in the year 734 B. C. E., merely as a matter of expediency. It was an easier method of re-annexing the rebellious Kingdom of Israel to the Assyrian Empire without cost of life or treasure, and he stooped to it. But when Tiglath-Pileser died and Shalmaneser IV succeeded him on the throne in Nineveh, Hoshea gave ear to the siren voice of Egypt, and rebelled. It is related that Hoshea sent an embassy to King So, more correctly, Pharaoh Sabako, of Egypt, when that energetic Ethiopian prince became master over the whole of the ancient Nile country. The new Pharaoh had ambitions northward. It was he who organized a coalition of Assyrian provinces in the Mediterranean country, with an eye to Nineveh. The traitor, Hoshea, proved the miserable stuff he was made of by joining actively in Sabako's ambitious schemes. In answer to Sabako, Shalmaneser rushed his veteran troops toward Egypt. The Kingdom of Israel was the first rebellious province he had to deal with. Hoshea was prepared when, in 728, Samaria was besieged. Samaria held out bravely enough for two years, waiting all the time for help from Egypt. But Sabako's promised armies and funds never came. Shalmaneser died during this siege; but his successor, the great Sargon, came on with re-enforcements and finally, in 721, captured and reduced Samaria, before Hoshea's Egyptian ally had been heard from. That was the end of the Kingdom of Israel, founded by Jeroboam ben Nebat, in the year 937, B. C. E., when he rebelled from Rehoboam, King Solomon's son. The Kingdom of Israel had lasted just 218 years.