_The princes of Judah are like landmark-removers_--commonest of cheats in Israel--_upon them will I pour out My wrath like water. Ephraim is oppressed, crushed is_ his _right, for he wilfully went after vanity._[513] _And I am as the moth to Ephraim, and as rottenness to the house of Judah._ Both kingdoms have begun to fall to pieces, for by this time Uzziah of Judah also is dead, and the weak politicians are in charge whom Isaiah satirised. _And Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah his sore; and Ephraim went to Asshur and_[514] _sent to King Jareb--King Combative, King Pick-Quarrel_,[515] a nickname for the Assyrian monarch. The verse probably refers to the tribute which Menahem sent to Assyria in 738. If so, then Israel has drifted full five years into her "thick night." _But He cannot heal you, nor dry up your sore. For I_, Myself, _am like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, I rend and go My way; I carry off and there is none to deliver._ It is the same truth which Isaiah expressed with even greater grimness.[516] God Himself is His people's sore; and not all their statecraft nor alliances may heal what He inflicts. Priests and Princes, then, have alike failed. A greater failure is to follow. 3. REPENTANCE FAILS. HOSEA v. 15-vii. 2. Seeing that their leaders are so helpless, and feeling their wounds, the people may themselves turn to God for healing, but that will be with a repentance so shallow as also to be futile. They have no conviction of sin, nor appreciation of how deeply their evils have eaten. This too facile repentance is expressed in a prayer which the Christian Church has paraphrased into one of its most beautiful hymns of conversion. Yet the introduction to this prayer, and its own easy assurance of how soon God will heal the wounds He has made, as well as the impatience with which God receives it, oblige us to take the prayer in another sense than the hymn which has been derived from it.[517] It offers but one more symptom of the optimism of this light-hearted people, whom no discipline and no judgment can impress with the reality of their incurable decay. They said of themselves, _The bricks are fallen, let us build with stones_,[518] and now they say just as easily and airily of their God, _He hath torn_ only _that He may heal_: we are fallen, but _He will raise us up again in a day or two_. At first it is still God who speaks. _I am going My way, I am returning to My own place,_[519] _until they feel their guilt and seek My face. When trouble comes upon them, they will soon enough seek Me, saying_:[520]--