Then I said to her: ‘For many days you will dwell as mine. You must not commit fornication, and you must not come to belong to another man; and I also will be for you.’

25. (a) As illustrated by Hosea, how did Jehovah discipline his covenant people in ancient times? (b) How was “David their king” looked for, and to which lookers was Jehovah’s mercy show?

²⁵ After Hosea lovingly took his legal wife Gomer back, he disciplined her with sexual restrictions, including, apparently, his own holding back from husbandly attentions. So, too, the exiled Israelites were disciplined, not being allowed to have Israelite kings or royal princes or idolatrous priests or other paraphernalia of idolatrous worship. (Hos. 13:11) Lovingly, in 537 B.C.E., Jehovah took back his disciplined, repentant remnant that turned back to him from apostate religion.