[406] In determining the date of the Book of Hosea the title in chap. i. is of no use to us: _The Word of Jehovah which was to Hosea ben Be'eri in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam ben Joash, king of Israel._ This title is trebly suspicious. First: the given reigns of Judah and Israel do not correspond; Jeroboam was dead before Uzziah. Second: there is no proof either in the First or Second Section of the book that Hosea prophesied after the reign of Jotham. Third: it is curious that in the case of a prophet of Northern Israel kings of Judah should be stated first, and four of them be given while only one king of his own country is placed beside them. On these grounds critics are probably correct who take the title as it stands to be the work of some later Judæan scribe who sought to make it correspond to the titles of the Books of Isaiah and Micah. He may have been the same who added chap. i. 7. The original form of the title probably was _The Word of God which was to Hosea son of Be'eri in the days of Jeroboam ben Joash, king of Israel_, and designed only for the First Section of the book, chaps, i.-iii. [407] vii. 7. There are also other passages which, while they may be referred, as they stand, to the whole succession of illegitimate dynasties in Northern Israel from the beginning to the end of that kingdom, more probably reflect the same ten years of special anarchy and disorder after the death of Jeroboam II. See vii. 3 ff.; viii. 4, where the illegitimate kingmaking is coupled with the idolatry of the Northern Kingdom; xiii. 10, 11. [408] x. 3, 7, 8, 15. [409] ix. 15. [410] vi. 8, 9. [411] vii. 1. [412] vii. 11. [413] x. 6. [414] xiii. 12 f. [415] The chronology of these years is exceedingly uncertain. Jeroboam was dead about 743; in 738 Menahem gave tribute to Assyria; in 734 Tiglath-Pileser had conquered Aram, Gilead and Galilee in response to King Ahaz, who had a year or two before been attacked by Rezin of Aram and Pekah of Israel. [416] 2 Kings xv. 8-16. It may be to this appearance of three kings within one month that there was originally an allusion in the now obscure verse of Hosea, v. 7. [417] 2 Kings xv. 17-22. [418] Or prince, שׂר: cf. Hosea's denunciation of the שׂרים as rebels. [419] Isa. vii.; 2 Kings xv. 37, 38.