She will follow after her lovers, But she won't overtake them; And she will seek them, But won't find them. Then she will say, 'I will go and return to my first husband; For then was it better with me than now.'
"I will go and return to my first husband ..." "She recalls the better days, the happier times, the more prosperous circumstances of the days of her fidelity to her first and lawful husband."[30]  The primary application of this is to the repentance that came to Israel during the Babylonian captivity, after which Israel never again fell into the worship of any other than the one true and Almighty God, until their final apostasy evidenced in the crucifixion of Christ and the official declaration of the rulers of the nation that, "We have no king but Caesar!" (John 19:15). That was the final repudiation of God, in which event they slew God in the person of His Son, making their separation from Him irrevocable.  Within a generation, their temple was destroyed, their city ruined, and their state terminated for at least 1,900 years!  But not all of Israel (as individuals) followed the ways of the whore.  Countless tens of thousands did indeed return to their first and lawful husband, but as a portion of that innumerable multitude who would become the new bride!  These are they who, in this passage, resolved to return to God.