Hosea 5:13

‘When Ephraim saw his sickness,

And Judah saw his wound,

Then Ephraim went to Assyria,

And sent to the Great King,

But he is not able to heal you,

Nor will he cure you of your wound.'

The main warning here is to Israel, but there is a spin off to Judah, possibly because Ahaz was still considering his options (compare Isaiah 7). Let Judah consider the fact that the king of Assyria will prove of no help in the end to Israel, whose king Menahem had parleyed with him (2 Kings 15:19). Or the reference may be to Hoshea's submission to him in order to gain the throne (2 Kings 17:3), in which case it is after Ahaz submitted to the king of Assyria. Both Israel (Ephraim) and Judah are seen as sick and wounded as a result of YHWH's judgments, but it is Israel who at this juncture look to Assyria for help. They ‘went to Assyria, and sent to the Great King' (dividing the consonants mlky rb, the y being an intermediate helping vowel to aid pronunciation, thus giving the title by which the kings of Assyria was known in an Assyrian inscription and Assyrian records, instead of mlk yrb, which gives the reading King Yereb or warrior king)'. But the king of Assyria could be of no assistance to them in their present state, for their condition was due to YHWH, the truly Great King, and not to Assyria. Thus the king of Assyria was helpless to do anything about it.

Judah are seen as having a putrefying wound (compare Isaiah 1:6) but possibly still as not yet committed to Assyria, otherwise they would be mentioned here (we must not insert what Hosea did not put in), which would support the parleying at this time as being done by Pekah. While the last two lines appear to tie in with the first two lines (sickness -- wound -- heal -- cure wound) this may simply be due to poetic balance with the last two lines referring to Israel (as the middle two lines suggest), rather than in order to include Judah, for Judah's wound would be healed for a time when Hezekiah and Josiah were on the throne.