You are strongly recommended to add to your library the excellent revised edition of Harper's Bible Dictionary titled, The Harper Collins Bible Dictionary, Revised Edition [book review], edited by Paul J. Achtemeier, with the Society of Biblical Literature (NY: Harper Collins, 1996). It is currently the best one-volume Bible dictionary in English, and it is available at Border's Books, Christian Science Reading Rooms, http://www.borders.com, or http://www.christianbook.com.

Hoshea (Heb., ‘salvation’). 1 The original name of Joshua (Num. 13:8; cf. Deut. 32:44). 2 The last king of Israel (ca. 732-724 b.c.), the son of Elah (2 Kings 15:30), and a contemporary of Ahaz and Hezekiah. Hoshea usurped the throne by murdering Pekah and served as a vassal ruler to Tiglath-pileser III and, after his death (727), to Shalmaneser V of Assyria. Shalmaneser ‘found treachery’ in Hoshea, however, when he withheld tribute and instead turned for aid to the Egyptian king ‘So’ (probably Tefnakhte I of Sais, 2 Kings 17:4). Egyptian aid never materialized and Samaria was taken by Sargon II after a siege of three years. The ultimate fate of Hoshea is not known. 3 The prophet whose Hebrew name has been commonly spelled in English as Hosea. 4 An Ephraimite chief in David’s bureaucracy (1 Chron. 27:20). 5 A Levite who with others set his seal to the covenant in the time of Nehemiah (Neh. 10:23).