Hosea, son of Elah, and last king of Israel. He conspired against and slew his predecessor Pekah, and seized his dominions. 'He did evil in the sight of the Lord,' but not in the same degree as his predecessors: and this, by the Jewish commentators, is understood to mean that he did not, like former kings of Israel (), restrain his subjects from going up to Jerusalem to worship. The intelligence that Hosea had entered into a confederacy with So, king of Egypt, with the view of shaking off the Assyrian yoke, caused Shalmaneser, the king of Assyria, to march an army into the land of Israel; and after a three years' siege Samaria was taken and destroyed, and the ten tribes were sent into the countries beyond the Euphrates, B.C. 720 (;; ). The chronology of this reign is much perplexed [see ISRAEL].