Judah was laid waste through her length and breadth. The Damascenes and the Israelites, the Philistines and the Edomites, had got the whole land into their power as far as the metropolis. Even from this heavy blow Judah would learn nothing. Instead of turning thankfully to Jehovah for rescue from such distress, the altars of the temples were altered after an Assyrian pattern. Isaiah saw this movement with the deepest indignation. "Your country is desolate; your cities are burned with fire; your land, strangers devour it in your presence. And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers. Had not Jehovah left to us a small remnant, we had been as Sodom and Gomorrah. From the sole of the foot to the head there is no soundness in us, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores; they have not been pressed out, nor bound up, nor mollified with ointment. Why should ye be stricken any more, and revolt any more? They are replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and agree with the children of strangers. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib, but Israel knows him not."[177]
Israel suffered still more than Judah by the carrying away of the population of the northern and eastern districts, the land of Nephtali, and the land of Gilead. Hoshea reigned over the remainder from the year 734 (p. 48). According to the Books of Kings he set on foot a conspiracy, slew Pekah, and became king in his place; according to the inscriptions of Tiglath Pilesar, Tiglath made him king over Israel. These statements are not contradictory. Pekah had been in league with Rezin of Damascus, the opponent of Assyria and Judah: why should not Tiglath Pilesar recognise and establish as king of Israel the man who had removed the opponent of Assyria?[178] Hoshea sent his tribute yearly to the king of Assyria.[179] But when the dreaded warrior prince of Asshur--when Tiglath Pilesar died, there awoke in the Philistines, the Phenicians, and above all in Eulæus, king of Tyre, and Hoshea, king of Israel, the hope of withdrawing themselves from the yoke of Assyria. If Hoshea had risen as a partisan of Assyria, he determined now that he was in possession of the throne to break loose from that empire. The hope of liberation rested not only on the fact that Tiglath Pilesar was no more; it received a still stronger point of support in the change which had taken place in Egypt in the last years of Tiglath Pilesar. Menahem of Israel had already thought of securing the assistance of Egypt before he sent his tribute to Assyria (p. 38), and the same thought must have occurred to Uzziah in his last years. Hanno of Gaza had taken refuge in Egypt from Tiglath Pilesar (p. 48). The prudent Bocchoris had left, or been compelled to leave, Syria untouched. But since his reign Sabakon had united the forces of Dongola, Nubia, and Egypt into a strong power. When Tiglath Pilesar had extended the dominion of Assyria as far as Gaza and Elath, and a victorious aggressive power of great strength stood on the borders of Egypt, the attack of Assyria might be expected there. A far-seeing ruler of Egypt, secure of his military power, must endeavour to anticipate this attack; he must prevent it by uniting the elements of resistance existing in Syria. If the issue were favourable, the dominion of Assyria over Syria would thus be removed; in any case Egypt would have allies in Syria for the war against Assyria. "Hoshea sent messengers to Seveh (Sabakon) king of Egypt," so the Hebrews tell us, "and brought the king of Assyria no present more as formerly." It is this attempt to gain assistance, and probably the presents which accompanied it--perhaps also gifts from Hanno at Gaza, the princes of Tyre, Zemar, and Hamath (see below)--which Sabakon, on the walls of Karnak, describes as tribute received from the inhabitants of Palestine (p. 73).