For the children of Israel shall abide many days without king, and without prince, and without sacrifice, and without sacred stone, and without ephod or idols.
"King ... prince ..." Under the conception of the Theocracy, God was the rightful ruler and King of Israel; but the people, desiring to be like the nations around them demanded a king.  The prophet Samuel was commanded of the Lord to grant their desire, noting at the same time that in such a demand they had rejected God  (1 Samuel 8:7).  The very kings which Israel received as a result of their sinful demands were the principal instruments of their eventual destruction, Ahab and his pagan queen Jezebel, for example, having introduced and promoted paganism.  McKeating was right, therefore, in his discernment that Hosea, "seems to regard the institution of the monarchy as a mistake in the beginning  (Hosea 8:4,9; 10:9-10; and 13:10-11)."[25]  "King and prince" in this passage therefore stand for the presumptuous and sinful institution of the monarchy with which Israel displaced the Theocracy, a mistake which ultimately destroyed Israel's relationship with God.