In the twelfth year of Ahaz King of Judah began Hoshea.
Aspects of a corrupt nation
Hoshea, the king here mentioned, was the nineteenth and last king of Israel. He lived about 720 years or more b.c. After a reign of nine years his subjects were carded away captive to Assyria, and the kingdom of Israel came to an end.
I. As an unfortunate inheritor of wrong.
Upon Hoshea and his age there came down the corrupting influence of no less than nineteen princes, all of whom were steeped in wickedness and fanatical idolatry. The whole nation had become completely immoral and idolatrous. It is one of not only the commonest but the most perplexing facts in history that one generation comes to inherit, to a great extent, the character of its predecessor. Though the bodies of our predecessors are mouldering in the dust they are still here in their thought and influences. This is an undoubted fact. It serves to explain three things--
1. The vital connection between all the members of the race. Though men are countless in number, and ever multiplying, humanity is one.
2. The immense difficulty in improving the moral condition of the race. There have been men in every age and land who have “striven even unto blood” to improve the race. Those of us who have lived longest in the world, looked deepest into its moral heart, and laboured most zealously and persistently for its improvement, feel like Sisyphus, in ancient fable, struggling to roll a large stone to the top of a mountain, which, as soon as we think some progress has been made, rolls back to its old position, and that with greater impetuosity.
3. The absolute need of superhuman agency spiritually to redeem the race. Philosophy shows that a bad world cannot improve itself, cannot make itself good. Bad men can neither hell? themselves, merely, or help others. If the world is to be improved, thoughts and influences from superhuman regions must be injected into its heart.
II. As a guilty worker of wrong.--Hoshea and his people were not only the inheritors of the corruptions of past generations, but they themselves became agents in propagating and perpetuating the wickedness. So that while they were the inheritors of a corrupt past, they were at the same time guilty agents in a wicked present. Strong as is the influence of the past upon us, it is not strong enough to coerce us into wrong.
III. As a terrible victim of wrong. What was the judicial outcome of all this wickedness? Retribution came, stern, rigorous, and crushing. (David Thomas, D. D.)