Hosea 13:11

"I have given thee a king in my anger, and have taken him away in my wrath."

Most of the commentators are in line with Dummelow's comment to the effect that, "This has often been referred to Saul; but the Hebrew tenses suggest repeated actions; and the allusions may, therefore, be to the repeated changes in the dynasty of the Northern kingdom."[22] As noted under Hosea 13:10, above, however, all such changes were inherent in the first. These verses (Hosea 13:10-11) make it certain that God had never approved of Israel's monarchy, any of it. As Mays noted:

"In Hosea 8:4, Hosea said that Yahweh had no part in Israel's kingmaking. Here the assesment is even more negative. Yahweh had no responsibility for Israel's kings, and all that his people can receive from God through them is his anger."[23]

It is a mistake, however, to limit this truth to the alleged negativism of Hosea; it must ever be remembered that he spoke the Word of God Himself.

Hailey believed that Hosea was here speaking especially of the kings of Northern Israel because, "These all had been idolators; from Jeroboam to Hosea, the first to the last, there had not been a true worshipper of Jehovah among them."[24] This, of course, is true; but had Judah's kings been any better? Yes, in a relative sense; but even the best of them had fallen far short of perfection. Saul's presumption led to his rejection; David corrupted the worship by the introduction of instruments of music, and his vanity led to the building of the temple and all the disasterous consequences that ensued from it; and Solomon sported a thousand wives and concubines and built shrines and memorials to all their pagan gods! Go down the whole list and it becomes starkly apparent that God's disapproval of Israel's monarchy was no late thing, applicable to the phantom kings of Ephraim's final years alone, but had rested upon the whole institution of their monarchy from the very beginning.