The rest of the book (cc. 4-14) consists of a collection of oracles, without titles, and often without obvious boundaries. They contain an appalling picture of the sins of the nation as a whole and of all classes of society; kings and princes, priests and prophets and people--all are corrupt. The theme of the whole may be read in Hos. iv. 1 f.: "There is no truth, nor charity, nor knowledge of God (religion) in the land; naught but swearing and breaking faith and murder and theft and adultery." Therefore ruin yawns before the nation. Yet God will not destroy utterly; all the pathos of the divine love finds words in such passages as xi. 8 ff., "How can I give thee up, Ephraim?" or xiv. 1 ff., "O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God." This book of a prophet of the northern kingdom has come down to us through Judæan hands; the title, with its list of Judæan kings (exactly the same as in the title of Isaiah), is doubtless due to a Jewish editor, and we are not surprised to find in the text itself Jewish touches, such as the words "and David their king" in iii. 5, or i. 11, but these are not numerous nor important. The text of Hosea is, however, unusually corrupt. The prophet's style is very difficult, and scribes did as they commonly do with a difficult text, they made mechanical mistakes because they did not understand and false emendations because they thought they understood what they did not. JOEL.--Joel was probably put between Hosea and Amos because the editors of the Book of the Twelve thought that he was one of the earlier prophets, and, chiefly because of its position, this opinion has been general until recent times. In the book itself there are neither names nor identifiable historical allusions by which its age can be determined. The whole situation, however, is that of the so-called post-exilic times. The occasion of the prophecy with which the book begins was a portentous plague of locusts, whose invasion and ravages are described in Joel 1-2 in highly poetical imagery. Locusts and drought together have so devastated the land that both men and beasts are perishing, and--the last touch of the extremity--the obligatory daily offerings in the temple have been cut off. The prophet calls to fasting and supplication; perhaps God may be entreated to have mercy on them (ii. 12-17). God had pity on his people; the following oracle (ii. 18-27) promises relief and everlasting prosperity. The visitation seems to the prophet an omen of the dread "Day of the Lord." He sees the nations gather beneath the walls of Jerusalem (in the valley with the ominous name, Jehoshaphat, "Jehovah judges") for the last onset, to be annihilated by the intervention of God. Then the golden age will be ushered in.