Afterward the children of Israel shall return, and seek Yahweh their God, and David their king, and shall come with trembling to Yahweh and to his blessings in the last days.
This whole terrible picture of the apostasy of ancient Israel was a product of their own arrogant presumption.  It began when they rejected God as their ruler and demanded a king like other nations; and through those kings they were led into the grossest immoralities and idolatrous worship of the Baalim, even rejecting God outright and attributing all of their blessings to pagan deities.  Throughout that long period of progressive apostasy, there was still the presumption that they were the "chosen people" of God; and Hosea's prophecy was designed to destroy that conceit.  The true Israel of God, submerged for centuries within the wrappings of their man-made state, and still later (until the times of Christ) obscured by experiences of the divorced nation, yet all the while "waiting for the kingdom of heaven," were at last blessed by the visit of the Dayspring from on High, whom they joyously welcomed.