For Israel has forgotten his Maker and built palaces; And Judah has multiplied fortified cities; But I will send a fire on his cities, And it will devour its fortresses."
Critics intent upon plastering up the Bible with their own varieties of scissors and paste jobs sometimes attempt to delete this verse because of its reference to Judah; but Judah belongs here.  That portion of Israel was not very far behind the northern kingdom in their apostasy; and it would be but a relatively short time before Judah also would suffer from the heel of the invader and the reduction to captivity already determined for Ephraim. Nor is this the only time that Judah appears in the prophecy, being never very far out of view in everything that Hosea wrote.  There is no textual evidence whatever of any such thing as a gloss here.  Mays indicated that "no confident argument" can sustain allegations of any such thing.[27]