c. 740 b.c.
Hosea prophesied to Israel and Judah during the decades surrounding the fall of Samaria to the Assyrian Empire. The resurgence of this ancient empire dominated much of the politics of the ancient Near East from the time of Jeroboam and Azariah until the empire’s demise at the end of the seventh century b.c. Assyria would eventually engulf nearly the entire Near East from Ur to Ararat to Egypt.
